Chapter 6 - The Face of a Monster
The visitor room in the basement of the precinct was cold, sterile, and smelled faintly of floor bleach and industrial paint. A thick panel of bulletproof glass separated the visitor side from the detainee side.
I sat on the cold steel stool, waiting.
A moment later, the heavy reinforced door opened. Two armed guards escorted Julian into the room.
He was wearing an orange institutional jumpsuit, his hands cuffed at his waist. His hair was messy, his eyes bloodshot, and he had a dark red scrape along his neck—a mark I hadn’t noticed earlier, likely left by my father’s fingernails during their final struggle.
Beside him walked Spencer Vance, a slick sixty-year-old attorney in a three-thousand-dollar suit, holding a leather briefcase.
Julian sat down across from me, picking up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands.
I picked up my receiver and held it to my ear.
“Valeria!” Julian cried into the phone, his voice echoing through the glass. “Thank God! You have to tell them! Tell this detective that it’s all a mistake! My uncle Spencer is going to handle everything, but we need you to drop the domestic complaint!”
I didn't say a word. I just stared at him.
“Valeria, talk to me!” he pleaded, banging his cuffed hands against the steel counter. “I did it for us! Your father was going to cut us out! He was going to put all his money into a private foundation! We would have been left with nothing! Zero!”
“He wasn't cutting us out, Julian,” I said softly through the phone. “He was cutting you out. Because he knew you were a thief.”
Julian’s face twisted into an ugly, sneering mask. The pleading look vanished, replaced by the bitter, spiteful arrogance I had never seen during our six years together.
“He was an old fool!” Julian hissed into the receiver. “He sat on a mountain of gold and treated me like a glorified clerk! I ran his acquisitions! I made his deals! I deserved half of that company!”
“You deserved nothing,” I said coldly. “You stole twelve million dollars. You poisoned an innocent man who gave you a home, a career, and his daughter’s hand.”
“He was dying anyway!” Julian shouted, his breath fogging the glass between us. “His heart was weak! I just sped up the clock! If you had just stayed asleep like a good wife, we’d be sitting in the Greenwich estate right now preparing for the board transition!”
Beside him, Spencer Vance furiously reached over and pulled the phone out of Julian’s hand, slamming it onto the receiver hook.
“Shut your mouth, Julian!” Spencer growled at his nephew.
I didn't flinch. I slowly raised my hand and pressed my palm against the cool glass, right in front of Julian’s face.
“The cremation was canceled, Julian,” I said, speaking clearly enough for him to read my lips through the partition. “The autopsy is finished. The poison was found. The note was verified. You are going to spend the rest of your miserable life in a maximum-security prison.”
Julian stared at my hand on the glass. He realized, with absolute certainty, that he was looking at the woman who now owned every single thing he had ever lusted after—the money, the company, the estate, and his freedom.
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He let out a guttural, frantic scream and lunged against the table, trying to smash through the glass, before the two guards tackled him to the floor, pinning his head against the concrete.
I hung up the phone, turned my back on him, and walked out into the light.
