D194.The rain over Park Lane didn't fall; it struck. It whipped against the leaded stained-glass windows of Blackwood Manor like handfuls of thrown gravel,

Three weeks later, the sky above HM Prison Bronzefield was the color of lead.

The high-security women's facility sat thirty miles outside London, a brutalist compound of razor wire, reinforced concrete, and heavy steel doors that slammed with industrial finality.

I was escorted down the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor of the non-contact visitation block. The guard unlocked Booth 4, gesturing for me to enter.

On the other side of the thick, scratch-resistant polycarbonate glass sat Vivien.

The transformation was astonishing. The Saint of Mayfair, the vision in emerald silk, had ceased to exist.

She wore a faded gray prison smock, three sizes too large, hanging limply over her sunken collarbones. Her golden hair, once styled by the finest salons on Bond Street, had been roughly shorn to her shoulders, dull and greasy under the buzzing neon tubes. Her manicured nails were bitten down to the quick, raw and red.

When she saw me, her bloodshot seafoam eyes flared with a desperate, manic intensity. She grabbed the black plastic receiver hanging on her side of the partition.

I sat down slowly, picked up the receiver on my side, and held it to my ear. I didn't say a word.

"Lorenzo," she breathed. Her voice was cracked, frantic, vibrating through the small speaker. "You came. I knew you’d come. You couldn't stay away from me."

"I came to deliver a message," I said, my tone as flat as a frozen lake.

"Listen to me!" she pressed her palms against the glass, leaving greasy smudges. "My barristers say the evidence against me is circumstantial! Julian is a drug addict—his testimony won't hold up under cross-examination! The judge will throw out the recordings! Elena was an unauthorized agent in my quarters! The Fourth Protocol protects—"

"The trial isn't going to be about the recordings, Vivien," I interrupted smoothly.

She paused, her chest heaving beneath the gray smock. "What are you talking about?"

"Julian broke forty-eight hours ago," I said, watching her eyes dilate. "When the Crown Prosecution Service offered him twenty years instead of life without parole, he led the Metropolitan Police divers to a drainage culvert off the M4."

Vivien’s breath caught in her throat. The color drained from her lips until they were almost blue.

"They found the hydraulic cutters, Vivien," I continued, speaking each word with razor-sharp precision. "They found the discarded brake fluid reservoir from Mother’s Bentley. And on the handle of those cutters, preserved in the sealed waterproof casing, was your father’s old monogrammed toolkit. And your complete set of latent fingerprints."

She pulled her hands back from the glass as if the polycarbonate had suddenly turned to red-hot iron.

"You aren't being charged with attempted murder anymore, Vivien," I told her. "The driver who was behind the wheel of my mother’s car that night—Charles Davies, a twenty-four-year-old boy from Sussex—died on impact three years ago. His death was ruled an accidental traffic fatality."

I leaned in closer to the partition.

"Yesterday afternoon, the Crown upgraded the indictment. You are now charged with First-Degree Capital Murder in the death of Charles Davies. There is no bail. There will be no parole. You will die inside these walls."

A low, animalistic whimper rose in Vivien’s throat. Her face twisted into a grotesque mask of grief, fury, and terror.

"I did it for us!" she shrieked into the receiver, her voice distorting into static. "I did it so we could have everything! You were weak, Lorenzo! You were trapped under your mother’s thumb! I was going to free you! I was going to make you a king!"

"You were going to make me your puppet," I replied. "And you were going to discard me the moment the trusts cleared."

I laid the receiver on the small metal shelf.

Vivien slammed her fists against the glass, screaming soundlessly on the other side, her mouth wide, tears streaming through the grime on her cheeks. Two female correctional officers stepped into the booth behind her, grabbing her by the elbows and forcing her down to the steel chair.

She thrashed like a wild animal, her shorn hair flying, her face pressed against the transparent barrier, watching me stand up.

I turned my back on her and walked toward the exit.