My daughter’s ashes were still warm against my chest when my husband finally answered the phone.

Three days later, the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, smelled of industrial bleach and defeat.

I sat on one side of a bulletproof glass partition in the high-security visitor wing. On the other side sat Thomas Fairchild.

He was unrecognizable. The tailored Italian suits, the slicked-back golden hair, and the smug, arrogant smirk that had defined him for ten years were gone. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hair buzzed short, his face hollow and bruised from the brutal hierarchy of federal prison life. His hands were shackled to the metal table.

When he looked up and saw me, his eyes widened with a grotesque mixture of hatred and desperate longing.

"Clara..." Thomas croaked, his voice cracking against the glass. He picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver on his side.

I picked up mine.

"You look thin, Thomas," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion.

"You destroyed us, Clara!" Thomas hissed, leaning forward until his face nearly touched the glass, tears of frustration spilling from his bloodshot eyes. "My mother is serving twenty-five years in Danbury! My father died of a stroke during his arraignment yesterday! Everything we owned... the mansion in Lake Forest, the trusts, the cars, our name... you took everything!"

"You didn't own any of it, Thomas," I replied calmly. "Every dollar your family spent was blood money stolen from the Castellane trust and paid out by Vance to keep me monitored. You married an orphan because your father told you to keep Vance’s greatest legal threat under your control. But you were so stupid, so consumed by your own petty cruelty, that you couldn't even do that right."

Thomas’s jaw trembled. "I loved you, Clara! In the beginning, I really did!"

"You let Chloe starve of oxygen while you bought Ximena a diamond bracelet," I said, cutting him off with razor-sharp finality. "Do not speak to me of love. You do not know what the word means."

Thomas looked down at his chained hands, his shoulders heaving with pathetic sobs. "Please, Clara. I know you control the consortium now. You have billions. You have private teams of the best lawyers in the world. Just... get me transferred to a minimum-security facility. Talk to the prosecutor. Tell them I was just following my father's orders. If I stay in Terre Haute... they’re going to kill me in here, Clara. You know what they do to child-killers in prison!"

I stared at the man who had abandoned his dying daughter in a cold hospital room while he attended a charity gala. I remembered the sound of Chloe’s shallow, wheezing breaths as she waited for the father who never showed up.

I remembered the warmth of her ashes against my chest while Thomas laughed on the phone, telling me to stop being dramatic.

"When Chloe took her last breath," I said softly into the receiver, "she called out for you. She asked why Daddy wasn't holding her hand."

Thomas froze, his eyes wide with horror.

"I won't ask the prosecutor for anything, Thomas," I whispered, my voice chillingly clear. "I will let the law take its exact, unvarnished course. You will serve every single hour of your sixty-year sentence in general population. And every morning when you wake up on that concrete bunk, I want you to remember: the woman you threw away like trash is the woman who erased your family from the earth."

I hung up the phone.

Thomas began screaming, violently slamming the receiver against the bulletproof glass, screaming my name as two burly federal corrections officers tackled him to the floor, twisting his arms behind his back and dragging him through the steel double doors.