Chapter 5 - The Glass Partition
Three days after the arrest, I sat in the private visitation booth at the county correctional facility, separated from Grant by three inches of reinforced glass. He wore an orange jumpsuit that was two sizes too large, his manicured stubble replaced by an uneven, graying beard.
He picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands, pressing it against his ear and leaning forward until his forehead almost touched the glass. "Emma... thank God you came. My lawyer says the bail is set at two million dollars cash."
I lifted my receiver, looking at him with steady, clear eyes that held no lingering trace of affection or sorrow. "I know. I'm the one who instructed our trust attorneys not to post it."
Grant's jaw dropped, his face turning an alarming shade of mottled purple. "What are you talking about?! You control the liquidity! I can't stay in here, Emma! The inmates know who I am! It's dangerous!"
"You'll survive, Grant," I said quietly. "Just like you expected me to survive being humiliated in front of our friends and family while carrying your child."
"I was drunk! I was showing off!" he pleaded, his voice cracking into frantic, high-pitched desperation. "I never meant those things at the dinner table! You know how important status is to me!"
"That's your fundamental flaw, Grant," I replied, my voice calm and completely unbothered by his hysterics. "You mistake cruelty for status. You thought diminishing your pregnant wife made you look like a powerful alpha male to your peers."
"Please, Emma," he begged, a tear cutting a clean line through the grime on his cheek. "Sign the bail release. We can sell the Hamptons house. We can settle the civil charges out of court. We can still be a family for our son."
"There is no Hamptons house, Grant," I informed him, watching his eyes widen in fresh horror. "You mortgaged it three months ago to cover Apex Consulting’s margin call in the Cayman Islands."
He slumped back in his plastic chair, realizing that his web of lies had been so thoroughly mapped out that he could no longer hide behind a single illusion. "You took everything from me. Every single dollar."
"I took nothing from you," I said firmly, leaning toward the glass so he could hear every syllable clearly. "You gambled away your own empire to buy the fleeting admiration of a woman who traded you for a plea bargain within twelve hours of your arrest."
Grant flinched as if struck by a physical whip, his grip on the phone going entirely limp. "Madison turned on me?"
May you like
"She gave the prosecutor your encrypted drive passwords this morning," I said, setting the receiver back onto the wall hook.
I stood up, smoothed down the front of my dark maternity dress, and turned my back on him forever as the guards escorted him back into the shadows of the cell block.
