The contrast between the woman I had heard on the terrace and the woman now gliding down the marble steps was staggering

Two weeks passed. The walls of the Malaga Provincial Detention Center were cold, grey, and unforgiving.

Beatriz sat in a small, windowless interrogation room, wearing a drab orange prison jumpsuit. Gone was the silk robe, the designer jewelry, the meticulously styled hair. Her skin was sallow, her eyes bloodshot, and her hands trembled as she clutched a paper cup of lukewarm water.

The door opened, and I walked in, accompanied by Arthur Pendelton.

Beatriz looked up, a flicker of desperate hope igniting in her hollow eyes. "Julian!" she cried, rising from her chair before the guard placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, forcing her back down. "Julian, please! You have to help me! The women in here... they know what I’m charged with! They tried to kill me in the courtyard yesterday! I can't stay here!"

I sat down across from her, crossing my legs comfortably. I looked at her with the cool detachment one might offer a stranger on a bus.

"You look tired, Beatriz," I noted softly.

"Please, Julian!" she begged, tears spilling down her pale cheeks. "I was wrong! I was sick! Mateo influenced me—he gave me pills, he manipulated my mind! I never wanted to hurt Isabella! It was all him!"

"Mateo signed a full plea bargain agreement yesterday morning," Arthur interjected smoothly, opening a manila folder on the metal table. "He accepted a fifteen-year prison sentence in exchange for testifying against you on all counts of aggravated child abuse, grand larceny, and corporate fraud."

Beatriz froze, her mouth agape. "He... he testified against me?"

"He gave the prosecution every text message, every voice note, and every bank transfer record," Arthur continued. "Including the voice recording where you explicitly outlined your plan to keep Isabella incapacitated so she couldn't report the abuse."

Beatriz dropped her head into her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. "Please... Julian... I’ll sign anything. I’ll give up everything. Just don't let them send me to prison for twenty years. I won't survive it."

I leaned forward, placing my elbows on the table. "You’re right, Beatriz. You won't survive twenty years in a state penitentiary. But that isn't my concern anymore."

I pulled a single legal document out of Arthur’s briefcase and slid it across the table toward her.

"What... what is this?" she wept, looking at the document through her tears.

"A full, absolute confession of guilt," Arthur explained. "You will plead guilty to all state and federal charges. You will waive all rights to appeal, all rights to future marital asset claims, and all rights to ever approach or contact Isabella Vance for the rest of your life."

Beatriz looked at the paper, her hand shaking as she picked up the pen Arthur placed beside it. "And if I sign it? What do I get?"

I looked into her eyes, my voice dropping into a cold, hard line. "You get to avoid a public trial where every graphic photograph of my daughter’s bloody hands will be displayed on national television. You get a recommended sentence of eighteen years instead of thirty. That is the only mercy you will ever receive from me."

She looked at me, searching my face for a single trace of the man who had once bought her diamonds and held her in the moonlight of our Marbella villa. She found nothing—only a solid wall of granite.

With a ragged, trembling sob, Beatriz pressed the pen to the paper and signed her name at the bottom of the confession.

As Arthur retrieved the document, checking the signature, I stood up to leave.

"Julian," she whispered, her voice barely audible as I reached the door.

I paused, but I didn't turn around.

"Did you... did you ever really love me?" she asked.