Chapter 5 - The Glass Wall
Forty-eight hours later, sitting in a wheelchair pushed by Major Collins, I was rolled into the high-security visitor visitation room of the Baltimore Federal Detention Center.
My father stood directly behind me, flanked by two armed federal marshals.
On the other side of the bulletproof glass partition sat Carter Sterling.
The transformation was astonishing. The slicked-back, perfectly styled hair was greasy and unkempt. The two-thousand-dollar Italian wool suit had been replaced by a coarse, oversized orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his shoulders. His face was pale, his eyes surrounded by dark, bruised rings from forty-eight hours of panic and sleeplessness.
When he saw me, his eyes widened with a desperate, pathetic glimmer of hope. He grabbed the plastic telephone receiver on his side of the partition with shaking hands.
I picked up the receiver on my side and held it to my ear.
"Clara!" Carter cried into the phone, pressing his face close against the scratched glass. "Clara, thank God! Look, you have to talk to them! You have to tell them this was all a huge misunderstanding! Tell them we had an argument—couples argue all the time! You slipped, Clara! Tell the federal prosecutors that you slipped on the kitchen floor!"
I stared at him through the glass. My expression didn't change.
"I slipped, Carter?" I asked, my voice calm, level, and utterly devoid of warmth. "Is that what happened when you slapped me across the face the moment I walked through the door? Did I slip into your hand?"
"I was stressed!" he pleaded, sweat beading on his forehead and dripping down his nose. "The firm was under pressure—I had a bad day! I didn't mean to hit you that hard! You know I love you, Clara! Everything I did, I did to build a future for us! For our family!"
"Our family?" I let out a dry, bitter laugh. "You stood there and watched me bleed out. You smashed my phone when I tried to call for an ambulance. Your mother told you to let me die so you wouldn't have to pay child support. Is that what you call love?"
"It was my mother!" Carter blurted out, throwing Eleanor under the bus without a single second of hesitation. "It was Eleanor! She’s the one who hated you! She poisoned my mind, Clara! She kept telling me you were beneath us, that you were just a low-class nurse trying to trap me! She pushed you against the counter, not me! You have to believe me!"
Behind the glass, I saw the pathetic, squirming soul of the man I had once believed was my protector. He was nothing more than a coward who bullied the weak and groveled before the strong.
"The baby survived, Carter," I said quietly.
A momentary relief crossed his face, followed immediately by calculated greed. "He survived? Leo is alive? That’s great! Clara, that’s wonderful! That means there's no serious harm done! A judge will see that! As the father, I have rights—we can raise him together, we can start over—"
"You will never see him," I interrupted, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Carter froze.
I reached into the folder resting on my lap and pulled out a stack of legal documents, pressing the front page against the glass.
"These are emergency divorce papers, an absolute restraining order, and a voluntary termination of parental rights," I said. "You will sign them today."
"I won't sign that!" Carter snarled, a flash of his old arrogance returning to his twisted face. "You can't take my son away from me! I'm an attorney, Clara! I'll fight you in every court in Virginia! My uncle will—"
"Your uncle Richard was formally disbarred an hour ago, Carter," I said, watching his eyes dilate in horror. "He is currently being processed in the southern district for federal racketeering. He won't be practicing law ever again. And neither will you."
I tapped the glass right over the termination line.
"The State Bar Association of Virginia has already suspended your license pending your criminal trial," I continued. "And the United States Attorney has added wire fraud and tax evasion charges after going through your offshore accounts. You are looking at twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary. You will sign these papers, Carter. Because if you don't, my father's legal team will ensure you serve every single consecutive second in the highest-security facility in this country."
Carter looked past my shoulder, his gaze landing on General Marcus Vance, who was staring at him with eyes that had watched empires fall.
The pen in the prison guard's hand was pushed toward Carter.
Carter's hand shook so violently that he could barely grip the cheap plastic ballpoint. With tears of pure humiliation streaming down his cheeks, he scribbled his signature on the dotted line, surrendering every claim he had ever held over me and my son.
I hung up the phone.
May you like
I didn't listen to him scream through the glass as the guards pulled him backward. I simply turned my wheelchair around, nodded to my father, and said, "Take me back to my son."
***
