Chapter 5 - Chloe's Awakening
The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn smelled of industrial bleach, damp concrete, and cold steel.
Twenty-four hours after the divorce hearing, Chloe sat in Interview Room 4, looking like a completely different person. The designer clothes were gone, replaced by a simple gray tracksuit; her blonde hair was pulled back in an unwashed ponytail; her face was pale, blotchy, and stripped of makeup.
Across the stainless-steel table sat Arthur Collins, Julian Thorne, and myself.
Chloe’s defense attorney, a weary public defender named Marcus Ross, sat beside her with his hands folded over a thin legal pad.
"We appreciate you agreeing to this proffer session, Mrs. Vance," Ross said cautiously, glancing at Julian with the nervous respect that junior attorneys always showed toward a former federal prosecutor. "My client is prepared to cooperate fully with the Department of Justice in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement regarding the corporate filings."
"Your client's signature is on seventy-four fraudulent customs declarations, Mr. Ross," Julian replied, his voice dropping into that chilling, clinical register that brooked no negotiation. "She faces up to twenty years in federal prison as a co-conspirator in an interstate racketeering enterprise. If she wants immunity, she doesn't just cooperate. She gives us the keys to Richard’s entire offshore network."
Chloe began to weep, pressing her shaking hands against her face.
"I didn't know about the drugs!" she sobbed, her voice muffled behind her fingers. "I swear to God, Emily! Richard told me that St. Claire Logistics was an old, failing company that he had rescued from your family’s incompetence! He said that you were addicted to painkillers after a car accident, and that you were trying to extort him for millions to support your habit!"
"And my grandmother’s necklace?" I asked, my voice cutting through her tears like a razor. "Did you think I gave that to him as a gift?"
Chloe dropped her hands, looking at me with raw, sickening guilt.
"He... he told me it was an heirloom from his mother's family," she whispered. "He gave it to me on my twenty-fourth birthday. He told me that I was the first real woman he had ever loved, that he was going to marry me as soon as the divorce was finalized, and that we were going to move to Lake Como."
Arthur Collins let out a dry, humorless chuckle.
He reached into his leather briefcase, pulled out a three-page document stamped with an official seal from Zurich Life Insurance, and slid it across the metal table.
"Read page two, Ms. Simmons," Arthur said.
Chloe frowned, wiping her nose with a paper napkin, and pulled the paper closer.
Her eyes scanned the bold text.
Her breath stopped.
"A... a term life policy?" she stammered, looking up at Arthur in confusion. "For five million dollars?"
"Look at the effective date, Chloe," Julian said, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Three weeks ago. Look at the primary beneficiary: The Saint-Germain Trust, managed solely by Richard Vance. And look at the double-indemnity rider for accidental death by drowning or vehicular failure."
The color drained from Chloe’s face until she looked as translucent as tracing paper. Her jaw trembled so violently she could barely form words.
"He... he was going to..."
"Richard never leaves witnesses, Chloe," I said gently, feeling a strange, unexpected pang of pity for the girl. She was vain, foolish, and greedy, but she had been nothing more than the next lamb being led to the exact same slaughterhouse I had just escaped. "When the federal audits started closing in two months ago, Richard knew he needed a scapegoat. You were going to take the blame for the fraudulent wire transfers, and then you were going to suffer a tragic boating accident off the coast of Amalfi. He would have collected five million dollars in insurance, liquidated the remaining shell companies, and disappeared into South America with a clean slate."
Chloe slumped back against the metal chair, staring at the ceiling as if the walls of the detention center were collapsing in on her.
"He called me," she whispered suddenly.
Julian stiffened, his gray eyes narrowing instantly. "When?"
"Last night," Chloe said, her voice shaking with terrified adrenaline. "From the payphone in the detention center block. The guards let him use it because his brother bribed someone on the graveyard shift. He told me that if the feds questioned me, I was supposed to say that Emily had an affair with the logistics terminal manager, and that Emily was the one who authorized the shipping manifests."
"Did he give you an address?" Julian demanded, pulling a pen from his pocket.
"A storage unit," Chloe choked out, nodding frantically. "In Long Island City. Unit four-twelve at Queens River Storage. He said... he said there's a laptop inside a silver flight case hidden behind the drywall. He told me to hire someone to break in and burn it before the feds executed a warrant."
Julian stood up so fast his metal chair screeched against the concrete floor.
He didn't say a word. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, hit speed dial, and walked out into the corridor, barking orders to the FBI field office before the heavy door had even swung shut.
Arthur Collins smiled, folding his hands over his legal pad.
"Well, Ms. Simmons," Arthur said smoothly. "I believe the United States Attorney will find that information extremely compelling."
I stood up, pulling my coat around my shoulders.
Chloe looked up at me, her eyes hollow, stripped of every ounce of the arrogance she had displayed in court twenty-four hours ago.
"Emily..." she whispered, her chin trembling. "Why are you helping me? I wore your grandmother's necklace in front of your face. I mocked you."
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I stopped at the heavy steel door, looking back at her.
"Because unlike Richard," I said quietly, "I don't need to destroy another woman to know who I am."
