Chapter 13 - Shadows Behind Bars
Inside the maximum-security federal penitentiary, the reality of their new existence had shattered the Sterling family dynamic. Evangeline, stripped of her makeup, designer silks, and sycophantic servants, sat in a stark concrete cell, reduced to a nameless inmate number. Her tyrannical grip on reality fractured entirely; prison guards reported she spent hours muttering to the empty walls about "low-class intruders" and "uneducated beggars."
Thane, meanwhile, found himself bunked in the general population. The elite pedigree that had once shielded him from accountability became his greatest liability. Inmates who had suffered under his family’s corporate corruption made sure he understood what real subjugation felt like. Stripped of his tailored suits and his mother's protection, he devolved into a broken, trembling shadow of a man, desperately writing daily appeal letters that were intercepted and shredded before they ever reached a judge's desk.
