Chapter 12 - Whispers in Cellblock B
Federal Correctional Institution Dublin was twenty-five miles east of San Francisco, a concrete fortress designed to break the spirits of the violent and the corrupt. Yet, in the sterile fluorescent light of the visitors’ annex, Victoria Sterling sat as though holding court in her penthouse overlooking Central Park.
Even in rough-spun orange scrubs, she managed an unnatural posture of absolute superiority. Her posture was erect, her silver hair brushed back into an austere chignon. When Warden Miller walked into the interrogation room, he did not look like an administrator in charge of eight hundred federal inmates. He looked like an anxious footman.
"You're taking a massive risk, Victoria," Miller whispered, locking the heavy steel door behind him. "The U.S. Marshals are conducting an unannounced audit next Tuesday. If they find the satellite phone or trace the shell transfers through the Cayman offshore entities, they won't just lengthen your sentence—they'll indict me."
Victoria didn’t flinch. She picked at a speck of dust on her fingernail, her pale blue eyes cold and fathomless. "Warden Miller, you speak of risk as if you still have an option. Do I need to remind you who paid the private school tuition for your twin daughters this semester? Or who holds the promissory note on your Vineyard property?"
The warden swallowed hard, his collar suddenly too tight. "The courier delivered the package to Mendocino. Exactly as you instructed."
A thin, venomous smile curled Victoria’s lips. "And the reaction?"
"The girl looked terrified. But Julian will figure out the courier route within forty-eight hours. He’s ex-military intelligence, Victoria. You underestimate your own son."
"I made my son," she said, her voice dropping to a gravelly, chilling whisper that made the hair on Miller’s arms stand up. "I taught him how to think, how to fight, and how to love. And because of that little bourgeois parasite, he turned my own blood against me. He disgraced our dynasty before the global media. He put me in a cage." She leaned forward, the chains around her wrists clinking softly against the stainless steel table. "He thinks fifteen years is an eternity. He forgets that inside these walls, I have something I never had outside: endless, uninterrupted time to plan."
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"What is the hair for?" Miller asked, unable to contain his morbid curiosity. "Whose was it?"
Victoria looked past him, her eyes reflecting the fluorescent tubes like fractured mirrors. "The girl thought she destroyed me with a hidden camera. She forgot the golden rule of high society: every mirror has a reverse side. And very soon, Clara will swallow far more than her own vanity."
