My mother-in-law destroyed my wedding dress three hours before I was supposed to marry her son.

"What do you want, Daniel?" I asked, my tone flat, professional, and detached.

He pressed his trembling hands against the Plexiglas, his knuckles white. "You have to tell them to drop the secondary fraud charges. If they convict me on the enterprise conspiracy count, I'm looking at fifteen to twenty years, Maya. Fifteen years! In federal prison!"

"You committed enterprise conspiracy, Daniel," I said. "You signed twenty-four fraudulent wire authorizations across four different states. What did you think was going to happen?"

"My mother forced me!" he cried, tears immediately spilling over his cheeks, his voice rising in panic. "It was all Eleanor! You know how she is! She controlled the trust! She controlled the family money after my dad died! She told me if I didn't set up those shell accounts, she would cut me out of the will completely! I didn't have a choice!"

I leaned forward, resting my forearms against the small metal counter.

"You always had a choice, Daniel," I said. "You chose the Hamptons house. You chose the Porsche. You chose the luxury suites in Monaco. You chose to sign my name on documents that would have sent me to prison for twenty years in your place."

Daniel flinched as if I had struck him. He looked down at the concrete floor, his lip quivering.

"I didn't want to hurt you, Maya," he mumbled. "I swear to God, I really loved you."

"No, you didn't," I said simply. "You loved having someone quiet, capable, and invisible who made you look like a good man. You loved having an accountant you thought you could manipulate. You never loved me, Daniel. You don't even know who I am."

He looked up through the glass, his eyes wild and desperate. "What about the assets? I have two million hidden in an account in Belize. Nobody knows about it. Not even my mother. I can give you the account numbers, Maya. I can sign it over to you. Just hire a private attorney for me. Get me a plea deal with no jail time. Please, Maya. I'm begging you."

I looked at him through the glass. The man who had sneered at my father’s work boots. The man who had stood by while his mother poured garbage down my wedding dress.

"I already found the Belize account three days ago, Daniel," I said softly. "I gave the routing numbers to Special Agent Miller yesterday morning. The funds have already been seized and redirected to the pediatric oncology ward at Mount Sinai."

Daniel froze.

The last speck of hope drained out of his eyes, leaving only a vast, terrifying void. He slumped against the metal counter, the plastic receiver slipping from his trembling fingers and dangling by its coiled metal cord against the concrete wall.

I didn't say goodbye.

I hung up my receiver, stood up from the stool, and knocked on the heavy steel door. The guard turned the key from the outside, and the door clicked open.

I walked down the long, gray hallway of the federal facility, stepping through the double security doors and out into the crisp, bright October afternoon.

The air was sharp and clean. The sky above Manhattan was an endless, brilliant blue.