Chapter 3 - The Interrogation RoomThe interview room at the federal detention center smelled of industrial disinfectant, cold concrete, and palpable, crushing despair.
I sat on one side of the heavy stainless-steel table, wearing a crisp charcoal blazer and dark sunglasses, watching through the one-way mirror as the door swung open.
Julian Vance was escorted in by two armed guards.
Gone was the charismatic, impeccably tailored billionaire tech titan who commanded boardrooms and treated human beings like disposable assets. He wore a standard-issue orange jumpsuit that was two sizes too big, his hair was unwashed, and deep, bruised circles framed his bloodshot eyes. He looked like a man whose entire reality had been ripped away and replaced by a waking nightmare.
When he sat down and saw me sitting across from him, his jaw dropped open.
For a terrifying second, I thought he might lunge across the table, but the heavy steel shackles binding his wrists to the bolted-down loop kept him firmly in place.
“Clara...” he whispered, his voice cracking horribly. “Clara, please... you have to help me. You have to tell the prosecutors that this was a misunderstanding. My father... he forced me into those offshore accounts! It was all his doing!”
I slowly removed my sunglasses, placing them on the table, and met his frantic, tear-filled eyes with a gaze as cold and hard as glacial ice.
“Your father is currently three cells down, Julian, trying to figure out which of his former political cronies will still accept his collect calls,” I said evenly. “And you’re sitting in an orange jumpsuit because you spent five years treating your marriage like a hostile corporate takeover.”
Julian swallowed hard, his lower lip trembling. “The baby... is the baby okay? Is she... is she mine?”
The sheer audacity of the question—coming from a man who had brought his twenty-two-year-old mistress to a baby shower, announced another woman was carrying his ‘real heir,’ and physically assaulted his pregnant wife—made my blood run hot with righteous fury.
“Don’t you ever utter her name,” I leaned forward, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that made Julian flinch. “You traded her existence for a twenty-two-year-old prop who vanished the second your bank accounts were frozen. Chloe cleared out your secondary secret accounts and boarded a one-way flight to Zurich thirty minutes before the FBI raided the mansion, Julian. She never loved you. She loved your credit limit.”
Julian closed his eyes, a choked, miserable sob escaping his throat as the final pillar of his pathetic illusion crashed down around him. “She... she left me?”
“Of course she did,” I said, standing up smoothly and buttoning my blazer. “You were a useful vehicle for her ambitions, just like I was supposed to be a useful decoration for yours. But neither of us played our parts the way you wanted.”
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“Clara, wait! Please!” Julian cried out, straining against his shackles as a guard stepped forward to grab his shoulder. “Don’t leave me here! I’ll give you a divorce! I’ll give you everything! Just get me out of this hell!”
“You’re already getting everything you deserve, Julian,” I said, turning toward the heavy steel door. “I signed the divorce papers this morning. And as for your empire? Consider it liquidated.”
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