Chapter 5 - The Prison VisitThree months after the surgery, inside the high-security visitation wing of the State Correctional Facility, the air smelled of industrial bleach, cold iron, and stale sweat.
Sitting behind a heavy panel of reinforced bulletproof glass was Richard Whittaker.
He looked completely hollowed out. His tailored suits were gone, replaced by a coarse orange institutional jumpsuit, his wrists bound in heavy steel handcuffs attached to a waist chain. His gray hair was messy, dark purple circles carved deep beneath his sunken, bloodshot eyes, his skin pale and covered in rough stubble.
Sitting across from him on the visitor stool, wearing an immaculate navy silk dress, her posture tall, fluid, and completely unshakeable, was me.
I held the acoustic phone receiver to my ear, looking at him with a calm, weightless peace.
Richard grabbed his receiver with both hands, pressing his face close to the glass, tears of pure, pathetic desperation cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheekbones.
"Claire...!" Richard wept frantically, his voice cracking into sharp, pathetic pieces through the small speaker. "Claire, thank God you came! Please... you have to talk to Arthur! They're offering a plea deal of twenty years without parole, Claire! Twenty years!"
I looked at him calmly, resting my hands comfortably in my lap.
"You tried to lock me away in a sanatorium for the rest of my life, Dad," I said softly through the receiver.
"It was Evelyn!" Richard shrieked, pointing a trembling, handcuffed finger toward the ceiling. "She came up with the idea! She told me you would ruin the company! I was desperate, Claire! I loved you! You're my daughter!"
"I am Charles Whittaker's granddaughter, Richard," I corrected deadpan, my voice smooth and razor-sharp. "And you never loved me. You loved the forty-million-dollar trust you thought you could steal from me."
Richard stumbled back against his metal chair, his hands shaking violently against the counter. "Claire... please... think of what people will say! I'm your father! You can't let your own father rot in prison!"
A cold, dry smile touched my lips.
"I won't be thinking about you at all, Richard," I whispered softly near the receiver. "Because tomorrow morning, Whittaker Holdings is breaking ground on the Claire Whittaker Living Donor Foundation—a ten-million-dollar medical institute dedicated to protecting organ donors from financial and legal exploitation."
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Richard stared at me, his mouth opening and closing silently, a loud, sobbing shriek of pure, unadulterated ruin escaping his throat as he realized that his legacy, his name, and his money were gone forever.
I set the phone receiver back onto its brass hook, stood up smoothly from the stool, and turned my back on him forever as two corrections officers dragged his crying, broken frame back into the dark corridors of the prison.
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