Chapter 8 - The Glass WallThe Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn was a bleak, towering monolith of concrete and misery. It smelled of bleach, stale sweat, and shattered arrogance.
Sitting in the sterile, fluorescent-lit visitor's booth, I waited behind a pane of thick, smudged plexiglass. Jonathan stood silently behind me, a physical anchor in a room designed to break the human spirit.
The heavy steel door on the other side of the glass buzzed loudly, and a guard escorted Julianne into the booth.
The woman who sat down across from me was entirely unrecognizable. The glamorous, condescending mistress who used to parade around in designer silk and mock my grief was gone. Julianne wore an oversized, faded orange jumpsuit. Her blonde hair was a greasy, tangled mess, and her skin was sallow, devoid of the expensive fillers and treatments David’s stolen money had provided. She looked hollow. She looked terrified.
She picked up the heavy black receiver with shaking hands.
I picked up mine. I didn't speak. I just stared at her, letting the silence crush whatever remained of her ego.
"Did you come to gloat?" Julianne whispered, her voice cracking. "Because you won, Megan. I have nothing. My lawyer says I’m looking at fifteen years. David won't even look at me during the joint hearings. You ruined my life."
"You ruined your own life, Julianne, the moment you decided to steal from a dying child," I replied, my voice devoid of any emotion, cold and clinical. "But I didn't come to gloat. I came to make a deal."
Julianne’s eyes widened with desperate, pathetic hope. "A deal? What kind of deal?"
"Marcus from Vanguard Holdings paid me a visit this morning," I said, watching her face closely.
The reaction was instantaneous. Julianne gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Genuine, unadulterated terror flooded her eyes. "He found you. Oh god, he’s going to kill us all. He’s going to kill me in here."
"He wants his ten million dollars, Julianne. The ten million you routed into a ghost account forty-eight hours before the FBI kicked my front door in," I stated, leaning closer to the glass. "Marcus thinks David hid it. But David is a moron. You hid it. You were planning to take the money and run, leaving David to take the fall for the cartel."
Julianne began to weep, pressing her forehead against the glass. "I had to! David was getting sloppy. The feds were circling. I knew Marcus would demand a blood sacrifice when the accounts froze. I was just trying to survive!"
"Where is the encryption key?" I demanded.
"I can't tell you," she sobbed. "If Marcus gets his hands on it, he won't spare me. He’ll take the money and have me shanked in the yard just to tie up loose ends."
"If you don't tell me, Julianne, I will walk out that door," I said softly, delivering the final, fatal blow. "And I will personally call Marcus and tell him that you have the money. I will tell him exactly which cell block you are in. How long do you think you’ll survive?"
She stared at me, realizing she was completely trapped between a cartel executioner and a mother with nothing left to lose.
"It’s in Lily’s music box," Julianne choked out, the words tumbling from her lips in a panicked rush. "The wooden one with the silver ballerina. The one David brought home from Switzerland. It has a false bottom. I hid the physical USB drive with the decentralized key inside it."
My blood boiled. They had used my dead daughter's music box—a gift I thought was a rare moment of fatherly affection—as a vault for cartel blood money.
"If I give you the drive, you have to promise to help me," Julianne begged, her tears smearing the plexiglass. "You have to tell the prosecutor I cooperated. Get me a plea deal. Please, Megan!"
"I will pass along your cooperation," I said smoothly, standing up from the metal stool.
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"Megan, please!" she cried through the receiver.
I hung up the phone. I turned my back on the woman who had tried to erase me, and walked out of the prison. I had the location of the key. Now, it was time to build a trap.
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