Chapter 6 - The Ultimate ConfrontationThree days later, in a heavily secured visiting room at the federal holding facility, Adrian sat on the other side of the reinforced glass partition.
He looked unrecognizable. His designer suit had been replaced by a coarse orange jumpsuit; his hair was unwashed, and the arrogance that had once defined his every movement was entirely gone. He stared hollowly at the wall before his eyes finally focused on the door.
When I walked into the room, dressed in a sharp, slate-gray Chanel suit with my hair pulled back into a crisp ponytail, Adrian scrambled forward, slamming his palms against the glass.
"Elena! Thank God!" he shouted, his voice hoarse and desperate. "You have to help me! My lawyers are incompetent! They're saying I’m facing twenty years in a federal penitentiary! They've frozen every dime I have left—I can't even pay for a commissary account!"
I picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver attached to the wall. After a second's hesitation, I lifted it to my ear.
"You called me provincial, Adrian," I said, my voice carrying clearly through the intercom speaker on his side of the glass. "You mocked my father. You thought my silence meant weakness."
"I was wrong! I was out of my mind!" Adrian wept openly, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. "Vanessa manipulated me! She poisoned my thoughts! It was all her plan!"
"No, Adrian," I replied coldly. "Vanessa was just a mirror reflecting your true nature. You didn't need to be convinced to pick up that riding crop. You enjoyed it. You wanted to destroy what you couldn't control."
"Please, Elena... we were married! Have some mercy!"
"Mercy?" I gave a faint, humorless smile. "When I asked you for water after the fiftieth lash, did you show mercy? When I begged you to stop at one hundred, did you listen?"
Adrian choked on his own breath, leaning his forehead against the cold glass. "What do you want from me? My life is already over. You took everything—my company, my money, my reputation."
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"Not everything, Adrian," I said, standing up and smoothing down the front of my jacket. "You still have your life. And you will spend every single day of it in a six-by-eight cell, waking up to the realization that you destroyed a multi-billion-dollar empire just because you wanted to impress a talkative mistress."
I hung the receiver back on its cradle, turned my back on him, and walked out of the visiting room without looking back.
