Chapter 23 - The Glass Partition
The Wayne County Detention Center smelled of industrial bleach, damp concrete, and old copper. It was an ugly, brutalist box of gray stone dropped in the shadow of the Detroit skyline, far removed from the manicured lawns of Grosse Pointe where Victoria Sinclair had lived her life.
It was 7:15 AM. The rain had subsided into a greasy morning fog that clung to the windows of the visitor’s wing.
I sat on a metal stool that squeaked against the linoleum, staring at the reinforced glass divider. When the steel door on the opposite side buzzed and swung open, my breath hitched.
Victoria walked in wearing an orange jumpsuit that hung loosely over her frail frame. Her immaculate platinum-blonde bob was unwashed, pinned back haphazardly with plastic clips. Without her makeup and tailored Chanel jackets, her face looked like cracked porcelain, her lips thin and desiccated.
Yet, as she sat down and picked up the heavy black plastic receiver, her eyes held the exact same haughty, cold brilliance that had ruled my entire life.
I lifted my receiver with a shaking hand.
"You look exhausted, Claire," she said, her voice crackling through the earpiece, entirely devoid of shame. "I hope you brought a competent attorney. That idiot court-appointed public defender they assigned me looks like he failed his bar exam twice."
"You signed my name," I said, the words coming out flat, devoid of the tears I had cried on the highway. "You tried to send me to federal prison to save yourself."
Victoria sighed, an exasperated sound, as if I were a child complaining about an unfair bedtime. "Don't be melodramatic. They aren't going to send my daughter to a maximum-security penitentiary. You have no criminal record. You'll get five years of probation, maybe eight months in an Alderson camp. I am seventy-one years old, Claire. If I take the full indictment for Julian and Marcus, I will die in a cell."
"You stole ten million dollars from public infrastructure funds," I hissed, leaning closer to the glass. "You and Julian bled Northbridge dry! Families lost their pensions!"
"Families who wouldn't know what to do with capital if it hit them in the face!" she snapped, her knuckles whitening against the plastic. "Julian was an arrogant amateur, but he had access. I simply managed the distribution. And who do you think paid for your semester in Paris? Who paid for the down payment on the house in Northbridge with the three-car garage? You loved the life my money bought, Claire. Don't play the saint now because the bill arrived."
"Aaron knows about the Comerica escrow account," I said softly.
Victoria’s posture froze. The dismissive sneer vanished from her lips, replaced by an ugly, twitching tension near her jaw.
"Aaron Vance is a disgraced, ruined accountant living in an unheated shack in Lansing," she sneered, though the tremor in her voice betrayed her. "He has no standing. Marcus destroyed him."
"Aaron didn't sign the release form in 2019, Mother," I said, feeling a strange, cold strength rising from my chest. "You forged his signature, didn't you? Just like you forged mine."
Victoria leaned in, her nose almost touching the glass, her eyes narrowing into venomous slits. "You listen to me, Claire. You back away from this. If Aaron touches that ledger, Marcus Croft won't just file another civil lawsuit. Marcus has men who make problems disappear on the I-94 corridor. You take the probation plea. You keep your mouth shut. Or neither of you will make it back to that farm."
May you like
The line clicked. The guard behind her tapped her shoulder, signaling the end of the ten-minute window. Victoria stood, smoothed down her orange jumpsuit with an instinctive gesture of high-society poise, and vanished behind the steel door.
***
