Chapter 5 - The Snake’s Last Bite
Three weeks later.
The Metropolitan Detention Center in San Diego was a concrete fortress overlooking the highway.
Inside the small, glass-partitioned visitation room, Julian Vance sat at a metal table. His hair was greasy, unwashed, and falling over his forehead. His stubble was thick, his designer clothes replaced by a coarse, ill-fitting gray prison jumpsuit.
The heavy steel door opened, and I walked in.
I was accompanied by two armed federal marshals. I wore an ivory trench coat, black leather gloves, and high heels that clicked rhythmically against the concrete floor. I looked like a woman stepping out of a high-fashion magazine—a stark, brutal contrast to the broken, sweating man sitting across the table.
Julian looked up, his eyes bloodshot, dark circles carved deep beneath his skin. When he saw me, a desperate, pathetic flash of hope lit up his face.
He snatched up the plastic telephone receiver attached to the wall.
I sat down calmly on the stool opposite the glass and picked up my receiver.
“Genevieve!” Julian’s voice cracked through the small speaker, filled with a frantic, breathless pitch. “Thank God! Thank God you came! Baby, please, you have to tell them! Tell the prosecutors it was all a misunderstanding! Tell them Victoria forced me into it! She drugged me too, Genevieve! She made me do it!”
I looked at him silently, my face an unreadable mask of ice.
“I was terrified, Genevieve!” Julian sobbed, pressing his palms against the thick glass. “Victoria threatened to destroy the company if I didn't go along with her plan! She told me you were having an affair! She lied to me! You know how much I love you, Genevieve! We’ve been together for ten years! Ten years!”
“Ten years, Julian,” I spoke into the phone, my voice low and measured. “And in ten years, you never once asked me about my parents. You never once asked why my father’s name was never mentioned in our house. You were so blinded by your own narcissism, so desperate to prove to the world that you were a self-made titan, that you never even saw who was standing beside you.”
Julian’s breath caught in his throat. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I was foolish! I was stupid! But I’m the father of your baby, Genevieve! Think about our child! He needs his father!”
A dark, cold smile touched my lips.
“His name is Leo Hector Sterling,” I said softly. “And his birth certificate reads ‘Father: Unknown.’ Legally, historically, and personally, you do not exist to him.”
Julian slammed his hand against the glass, his face twisting into a hideous sneer as his desperate pleading vanished, replaced by the ugly, bitter rage I knew so well.
“You trapped me!” he spat into the receiver. “You lied to me for ten years! You acted like a weak, helpless little mouse while you sat on hundreds of millions of dollars! If you had just told me who your father was, I would have treated you like a queen!”
“And that, Julian, is why I never told you,” I replied, my voice chillingly soft. “I wanted to see who you were when you thought I had nothing to give you. I wanted to see if you loved me for who I was, or if you were just waiting for a better deal to come along.”
I leaned closer to the glass, looking straight into his trembling pupils.
“You chose Victoria because you thought her father’s fifty million dollars made her royalty,” I whispered. “You traded a four-star Admiral’s daughter and the sole heiress to a multi-billion-dollar trust for a cheap crook’s spoiled daughter.”
Julian froze, the brutal reality of his colossal mistake crashing down on him with crushing force.
“The toxicology reports came back yesterday, Julian,” I continued. “The prenatal vitamins you gave me contained heavy doses of misoprostol and liquid sedatives—compounds Victoria acquired through her family’s private medical clinic in Miami. Federal prosecutors have officially upgraded your charges to attempted murder of a military dependent and conspiracy to commit murder for financial gain.”
“No...” Julian gasped, his hand slipping down the glass. “No, please... Genevieve, I’ll take a plea deal! I’ll sign over everything! I’ll sign a full confession against Victoria!”
“Victoria already signed a full confession against you two hours ago, Julian,” I said calmly. “She traded her testimony for a reduced sentence in a state facility. She gave up your text messages, your encrypted emails, and the voice recordings of you discussing how you were going to split my estate after my 'accidental drowning.'”
Julian’s face went completely blank. His jaw dropped, his eyes staring into space as his entire world shattered into irrecoverable dust.
I slowly hung the telephone receiver back on its hook.
I stood up, adjusting my ivory trench coat, and turned my back on the man I had once loved.
May you like
“Genevieve! GENEVIEVE!” Julian screamed through the glass, slamming his fists against the partition until the marshals grabbed his arms and forced him down onto the floor. “DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE! GENEVIEVE!”
I walked out the heavy steel door without looking back once.
