Chapter 6 - The Prison VisitationThree months after the trial, inside the maximum-security visitation wing of the Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution, the air smelled of industrial bleach, cold iron, and stale sweat.
Sitting behind a heavy panel of reinforced bulletproof glass was my brother, Caleb Bennett.
He looked completely unrecognizable. The polished, handsome corporate executive in the tailored suits was gone. In his place sat a hollowed-out, broken man wearing a coarse orange institutional jumpsuit, his wrists bound in heavy steel handcuffs attached to a waist chain. His hair was messy, dark purple circles carved deep beneath his bloodshot eyes, his skin covered in rough stubble.
Sitting across from him on the visitor stool, wearing an immaculate white cashmere coat and trousers, her dark hair falling softly over her shoulders, was me.
I held the acoustic phone receiver to my ear, looking at him with a calm, weightless peace.
Caleb grabbed his receiver with both trembling hands, pressing his face close to the glass, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheekbones.
"Mara...!" Caleb wept frantically, his voice cracking into sharp, pathetic fragments through the small speaker. "Mara, thank God you came! Please... you have to talk to the federal prosecutor! They're offering Harrison and me twenty-five years without parole, Mara! Twenty-five years!"
I looked at him calmly, resting my hands comfortably in my lap.
"You tried to send me to a federal prison for twenty years, Caleb," I said softly through the receiver. "You stood in a courtroom and called my scars fake. You hired Harrison to forge our father's signature while he was dying."
"It was Victoria's idea!" Caleb shrieked, pointing a trembling, handcuffed finger toward the ceiling. "She told me you didn't deserve the company! She told me you were just a broken soldier who wouldn't fight back! I was desperate, Mara! I'm your brother!"
"I don't have a brother, Caleb," I corrected deadpan, my voice smooth and razor-sharp. "My brothers and sisters are the men and women I served with in the Arghandab Valley."
Caleb stumbled back against his metal chair, his hands shaking violently against the counter. "Mara... please... think of our family name! You can't let your own mother and brother rot in prison!"
A cold, dry smile touched my lips.
"I won't be thinking about you at all, Caleb," I whispered softly near the receiver. "Because tomorrow morning, Bennett Meridian Systems is launching the Arthur Bennett Veteran Defense Foundation—a fifty-million-dollar medical and legal initiative dedicated to protecting wounded veterans from corporate exploitation."
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Caleb 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 freedom, 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.
