Chapter 10 - Behind the Scratched Plexiglas
The visitor booth at the County Jail was cold, reeking of industrial floor cleaner and stale despair. A thick sheet of scratched, bulletproof Plexiglas separated the two rows of metal stools, with a pair of black plastic telephone handsets mounted on either side.
A heavy steel door buzzed open on the inmate side.
A female corrections officer led Chloe into the booth. She was wearing an orange scrub top that hung loosely off her gaunt frame. Her hands were cuffed to a belly chain, her feet shuffling in orange plastic slip-on shoes. The right side of her jaw was held together by an intricate network of surgical metal pins, wires, and rubber bands, her skin mottled with fading black and yellow bruises. Her signature blonde hair was greasy, unwashed, and pulled into a messy knot.
She sat down on the metal stool, wincing in pain as the movement pulled against her wired jaw. Slowly, with trembling fingers, she lifted the plastic handset to her ear.
I sat down opposite her, picking up my receiver. I didn't say a word. I just stared at her with dead, unblinking eyes.
Chloe swallowed hard, tears instantly welling in her red-rimmed eyes. When she spoke, her voice was a muffled, slurred whisper through her clenched teeth, every syllable fighting against the metal wires holding her jaw shut.
"M-Mark..." she sobbed, pressing her cuffed hands against the glass. "Mark, please... you have to help me... you have to tell the prosecutor to drop the assault charges..."
"Is that why you called me here?" I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion.
"They're sending me to a maximum-security prison, Mark!" she wept, snot and tears dripping down her swollen chin. "The women in there... they know what I was charged with... they know about the baby... they said they're going to kill me the second I get out on the yard! I won't survive fifteen years! You know I can't survive in a place like that!"
"You should have thought about that before you raised a brass buckle over an eight-month-pregnant woman's belly," I replied coldly.
"Dad told me to!" she shrieked through her wires, banging her cuffed wrists against the ledge. "Dad said you were stealing the family money! He said Emily was manipulating you, that she was trying to cut us out! He told me if I got the signature, he would pay off the loan sharks and buy me a condo in Paris! He lied to me, Mark! He used me!"
"Arthur used you because you let him," I said, leaning closer to the glass. "You didn't care where the money came from, Chloe. You didn't care that twelve million dollars belonged to an innocent unborn child. You cared about your designer bags, your sports cars, and your country club reputation. You broke into my house with a weapon. You beat Emily until her placenta tore away from her uterine wall. You almost murdered your own nephew."
"I'm sorry!" she wailed, hyperventilating, her face contorting in agony as the wires strained against her bone. "I'm so sorry, Mark! I didn't mean for the baby to get hurt! I just wanted her to sign! Please, Mark... talk to Richard... tell him to let me plead to a lesser charge! I'm your sister! We have the same blood!"
"Blood doesn't make you family, Chloe," I said, every word hitting her like a hammer. "Blood just makes you a genetic match. My family is sitting in an ICU room right now. My son is named Liam. He weighs four pounds. He has a tube in his chest draining fluid because you collapsed his lung."
Chloe gasped, shaking her head in horror. "Is... is he...?"
"He's alive," I said. "No thanks to you. And he will grow up in a world where he never has to hear your name. Today, Richard finalized the court petitions. We have officially stripped the Vance name from our lives. Emily, Liam, and I are legally changing our last names to Sterling."
Chloe froze, staring at me in utter disbelief. "You're... you're erasing the family name?"
"The Vance name is synonymous with fraud, greed, and cowardice," I said, standing up from the metal stool. "It belongs in a federal prison registry, not on my son's birth certificate."
"Mark, don't leave! Please! Don't hang up!" she screamed, lunging against the glass, her cuffs rattling violently as the guard stepped forward, grabbing her by the shoulder. "Mark! I have nothing left! They took my car! They took my apartment! I have nothing!"
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"You have fifteen years to think about what you did," I said.
I hung up the plastic receiver, turned my back on her screaming, sobbing face, and walked through the heavy steel door into the sunlight, never looking back.
