Chapter 13 - The Prison Confession
The federal penitentiary was a bleak, towering fortress of gray concrete and razor wire that seemed to drain the color from the sky.
I walked through the sterile visitation room, my designer heels clicking sharply against the cold linoleum floor.
David was escorted out from a heavy steel door, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and heavy iron shackles around his wrists and ankles.
He looked absolutely pathetic, his previously handsome face hollowed out and covered in dark bruises from prison fights.
He sat down across from me, separated by a thick pane of bulletproof glass, and picked up the black telephone receiver.
"I didn't think you would ever come to see me, Sarah," David rasped, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and regret.
I did not offer him a greeting, nor did I show a single ounce of pity for his miserable condition.
I pressed my phone to the glass, showing him a high-resolution photograph of the silver locket and the blood-stained note.
David's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror, and he instinctively pulled back from the glass.
"Where did you get that?" he whispered frantically into the receiver, looking around the room as if a sniper were watching us.
"Who is Victoria Sterling, David, and what did your mother know about her?" I demanded, my voice cold and uncompromising.
David swallowed hard, sweat immediately beading on his pale forehead.
He confessed that Margaret had discovered my father's secret decades ago while working as a low-level accountant for his empire.
Victoria Sterling was the true heir to the fortune, and my father was just a ruthless corporate shark who married her for the power.
"Your mother wasn't just committed, Sarah," David choked out, tears forming in his desperate eyes.
"Your father paid the doctors to keep her heavily sedated for thirty years, effectively erasing her from existence."
The breath caught in my throat as the magnitude of my father's cruelty fully settled into my mind.
"But the asylum closed down, Sarah, and Victoria escaped during the chaotic transfer of patients," David continued, his voice dropping to a panicked whisper.
"My mother was terrified of Victoria, she said the woman had become completely unhinged by the torture."
David pressed his hand against the glass, leaving a greasy smudge on the pristine surface.
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He warned me that Victoria didn't just want her money back; she wanted to burn my father's entire world to the ground.
And as the sole beneficiary of the stolen empire, I was standing directly at the center of her crosshairs.
