Chapter 9 - The Last Visitor
The visitation room at the Ravenport County Correctional Facility was cold, sterile, and smelled of heavy industrial bleach.
A single sheet of reinforced safety glass separated the two steel chairs bolted to the concrete floor.
Elena Moretti sat on the far side of the glass, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. Her luxurious dark hair was tied back in a messy knot, her face thin, hollowed out, and stripped of all makeup. The glamorous, calculating woman who had stood in silk robes drinking champagne three weeks ago was completely gone. In her place sat a broken, frightened inmate facing fifteen years in a federal penitentiary for attempted murder and treason.
The heavy steel door on the visitor’s side clicked open.
Adrian walked in, wearing his charcoal suit, stepping silently across the concrete floor to take the seat across from her. He set a thin blue folder on the metallic counter between them.
Elena looked up, her eyes red-rimmed, filled with a mixture of desperate hope, profound guilt, and overwhelming shame. She picked up the plastic telephone receiver attached to the wall with a coiled cord.
Adrian picked up his receiver, holding it to his ear without speaking.
“Adrian...” Elena’s voice came through the speaker, thin, cracked, and trembling. “You... you came.”
“You asked for me, Elena,” Adrian replied, his voice calm, flat, and completely devoid of malice.
Elena pressed her palm against the safety glass, her eyes welling with hot tears. “Look at me, Adrian... please... look at what’s happened to me...”
“I see a woman who made a choice,” Adrian said softly.
“It was Marcus!” Elena sobbed into the receiver, pressing her forehead against the glass. “He manipulated me, Adrian! He told me you were going to bankrupt the family! He told me you didn't love me anymore! He gave me the poison... he forced me to go to the funeral home!”
Adrian listened quietly, letting her desperate lies spill out until she ran out of breath.
“I stood in that casket for three hours, Elena,” Adrian said, his gravelly voice cutting through her sobs with absolute clarity. “I didn't hear Marcus manipulation. I heard you laugh when you thought I was dead. I heard you tell him that my death was a relief.”
Elena froze, her mouth trembling, unable to form another word as the cold truth crushed her remaining excuses.
“I didn't bring you here to listen to your apologies,” Adrian continued calmly, pushing the blue folder against the glass base. “Those papers contain the complete relinquishment of all claims to the Moretti estate, the River Heights house, and your personal trust accounts. You sign them, and my legal team will decline to seek maximum sentencing enhancements at your trial next month. You’ll serve eight years instead of twenty.”
Elena looked at the folder, then back at the man she had betrayed. She saw no hatred in his eyes. She saw something much worse.
Absolute indifference. To Adrian Moretti, she was no longer a threat, a betrayal, or a memory. She was simply an administrative detail being closed.
With trembling fingers, Elena picked up the tethered pen on her side of the partition and signed her name on the bottom line of the three pages.
“Will you... will you ever forgive me?” she whispered into the receiver, looking up through her tears.
Adrian took a slow, deep breath. He picked up his folder, stood up from the steel chair, and looked down at her through the glass one last time.
May you like
“Forgiveness is for people who make mistakes, Elena,” Adrian said softly. “You made a plan.”
He hung up the receiver, turned on his heel, and walked out through the heavy steel door without looking back.
