Chapter 14 - The Visiting Cage
Two weeks after the gala, I traveled under private armed escort to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan.
The heavy steel gates buzzed with a harsh, industrial sound as I was escorted into the maximum-security non-contact visitation booth.
I sat down calmly in the chair, dressed in a sharp navy power suit, looking through the three-inch reinforced ballistic glass.
On the other side of the partition, the heavy iron door opened, and Jaxson Vance was pushed into the room by two armed federal corrections officers.
He wore an oversized orange prison jumpsuit that hung loosely on his emaciated frame.
His hair was shaved to the scalp, his expensive tan had faded into a sickly, yellow pallor, and dark, purple hollows circled his sunken eyes.
His hands were bound tightly in steel handcuffs linked to a heavy chain around his waist.
When he saw me sitting on the other side of the glass, radiant, powerful, and untouchable, his trembling hands reached out to touch the cold glass.
He picked up the heavy plastic receiver with shaking fingers, pressing it against his ear as tears spilled down his hollow cheeks.
“Maya…” Jaxson sobbed, his voice coming through the speaker as a broken, pathetic rasp.
“Look at me… please… look at what they’re doing to me…”
I picked up my receiver, holding it lightly to my ear, my expression completely blank of all emotion.
“I am looking at you, Jaxson,” I said, my voice smooth as silk and cold as ice.
“I see a murderer wearing the uniform he earned.”
“Maya, I am begging you on my knees!” Jaxson wept, pressing his forehead against the scratch-resistant glass.
“Tell the prosecutors my father forced me to rig that plane!”
“Tell them Bianca made me hit you in the diner!”
“I will sign over the remaining foreign shell companies! I will be your slave! I will do whatever you want!”
“Just don't leave me in this concrete cage for the next fifty years!”
I listened to his desperate, groveling voice, remembering the moment my body slammed against the sticky linoleum while he laughed above me.
“Do you remember what you asked me in that diner, Jaxson?” I asked softly into the receiver.
Jaxson froze, his breath catching in his throat.
“You asked me if I had any idea how much your cashmere blazer cost,” I continued, every word ringing with the absolute weight of justice.
“You believed that because you wore money and held stolen patents, you had the right to strike the weak and laugh at their blood.”
“Now, you will wear orange cotton for the rest of your life.”
“You will eat from plastic trays.”
“And every single night when you close your eyes in this dark cell, you will remember that the woman who put you here was the waitress you thought you could break with a twenty-dollar bill.”
May you like
I placed the receiver back on its cradle, stood up from my chair, and turned my back on him without a single glance behind me.
Behind the reinforced glass, Jaxson began slamming his shackled fists against the wall, screaming my name in absolute, hopeless agony as the guards dragged him away into the eternal darkness of the prison block.
