Chapter 10 - The Reckoning at Rikers
The glass partition at the Rikers Island visitor facility was smudged with age and neglect. On the other side sat Indigo Vance, handcuffed to the steel table, looking fifty pounds lighter than the pompous patriarch who had assaulted me in my suburban home six months ago.
His skin was yellowed, his breath rattling in his chest, his once-pristine silver hair falling in greasy strands around his hollow cheeks. When he saw me sitting across from him in an immaculate navy suit, his lips curled into an involuntary sneer.
"Come to gloat, you treacherous little viper?" Indigo rasped, coughing violently into his prison jumpsuit. "Come to see what your betrayal did to the man who made you?"
"You didn't make me, Indigo," I replied, keeping my hands folded calmly on the table. "You used my salary to float your bad loans, and when the money ran out, you tried to steal from a dead woman's estate. And now, Victor Morales is sending couriers to my car."
Indigo’s sneer instantly evaporated. His yellowed eyes widened in pure, visceral terror. "Morales... Morales contacted you?"
"His associates tapped on my window an hour ago," I said, leaning closer to the glass. "They gave me seventy-two hours. But here is the part you didn't anticipate, Indigo: Marcus and I just handed the grand jury every single transaction code linking your shell companies to Morales’s money-laundering network in Panama."
Indigo gripped the edge of the table, his handcuffs clinking sharply against the metal. "No... no! You don't understand what you’ve done! Morales will kill us! He will kill Bruno, he will kill Amber, he will hunt you down!"
"Morales won't have time to hunt anyone down," I said with chilling calmness. "Two hours ago, federal agents and Europol executed simultaneous arrest warrants across three properties in Miami, New York, and Geneva. Victor Morales was intercepted at a private airfield in Teterboro trying to board a jet to Zurich. He is currently being processed in federal custody three floors below us."
Indigo froze, his mouth hanging open like a dying fish. The realization washed over him like ice water: his ultimate threat, the terrifying monster he thought would terrify me into submission, had been crushed by the very forensic evidence I spent the last month organizing.
"You're a monster," Indigo whimpered, tears of helpless fury welling in his red-rimmed eyes. "You destroyed our family. You ruined Bruno’s future."
"Bruno ruined his own future the night he stood in my hospital room and told me to sign over my inheritance while my face was bleeding," I replied, standing up to leave. "You built your lives on intimidation, violence, and theft, Indigo. You thought because I was polite, because I endured your cruelty for ten years, that I was weak. But endurance isn't weakness. It was just patience."
I turned my back on him and walked toward the heavy security door.
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"Jade! Wait! Tell them to give me medical bail!" Indigo screamed through the speaker, banging his cuffed hands against the glass. "Jade! Have mercy!"
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind me, drowning out his desperate cries forever.
