Chapter 7 - The Prisoner's Call
Two weeks into my new job, the office receptionist buzzed my desk.
"Elena, line one. It's a collect call from the Collin County Detention Center."
My hand hovered over the receiver for a second. The old me—the woman who spent eighteen months crying over vague, condescending text messages—would have slammed the phone down. But the woman sitting in this glass office, looking out over the sprawling Dallas skyline, felt only a cold, detached curiosity.
I pressed the button.
"Accept charges," I said clearly.
"Elena!" Julian’s voice burst through the speaker, thin, frantic, and stripped of all its corporate polish. He sounded like a man shouting from the bottom of a well. "You have to help me. You have to talk to Arthur. They're trying to disbar me permanently. They're talking about thirty years in federal prison!"
"You called the wrong number, Julian," I said, my voice completely devoid of warmth.
"I'm your husband—your ex-husband! We share a son!" he screamed, his voice cracking with desperation. "Tell Noah to give back the flash drive. Tell him he made his point! The authorities are saying he’s a material witness in a grand jury probe. A child can’t testify, Elena! It's illegal!"
"Noah isn't testifying, Julian. The paper trail is doing all the talking," I replied smoothly. "And as for being your ex-wife? I spent eighteen months waiting for you to act like a husband. You chose your path. Now you get to sleep on a steel cot while I manage the office you used to run."
"Elena, wait! Don't hang up! Victoria won't even answer my letters! Her father sent a team of lawyers to strip my name off—"
Click.
May you like
I hung up the phone, locked my computer screen, and walked over to the window. Down on the street, tiny yellow cabs zipped through traffic like ants. The nightmare was over. We had won.
Or so I thought.
