Chapter 10 - The Reckoning at MCC
Two weeks later, the autumn wind had stripped the trees bare along the Chicago riverfront.
In the high-security visiting room of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Victor Vance sat behind a thick partition of reinforced plexiglass. He wore an oversized bright orange jumpsuit. His hair was greasy and unwashed, dark circles hung like bruised hollows beneath his sunken eyes, and his hands trembled as he picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver.
On the other side of the glass sat Margaret Sterling.
She had come alone. She wore a tailored black coat and dark leather gloves. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear, looking at Victor not with rage, not with hatred, but with the cool, clinical detachment of a scientist observing an insect trapped in amber.
"You came," Victor croaked, his voice hoarse and broken. "Are you here to gloat, Margaret? Are you here to laugh at me like you laughed at my mother?"
"I don't gloat, Victor," Margaret said calmly. "Arthur taught me long ago that gloating is a waste of energy when justice has already finished the work."
Victor pressed his forehead against the plexiglass, tears of rage and desperation leaking from his bloodshot eyes. "I offered a full plea deal. My lawyer says the prosecutor is demanding eighteen years in medium security! Eighteen years, Margaret! I’ll be fifty-three when I get out! I’ll have nothing! My life is over!"
"Your life as a con artist is over," Margaret replied evenly. "Your life as an inmate is just beginning."
"Tell Claire to drop the civil charges!" Victor pleaded, his voice rising into a cracked whine that drew the attention of the armed guards standing along the wall. "The federal charges are enough! If you drop the civil fraud suit, my mother can keep her small condo in Florida. She's living in a motel right now, Margaret! Have some Christian mercy!"
Margaret leaned closer to the glass. Her eyes were as deep and unyielding as winter ice.
"Christian mercy requires genuine repentance, Victor," she said softly. "You have no repentance. You only have regret that your scheme failed. Two weeks ago, at my dining table, you took my plate—a plate purchased by my late husband for our thirtieth anniversary—and you smashed it onto the floor. You commanded me to crawl on my knees and lick my dinner like a dog."
Victor flinched, looking away in shame.
"You believed that because I was old, because I was quiet, because I was grieving, that I had no strength left," Margaret continued, her voice razor-sharp. "You forgot that women of my generation built the foundations of this country while men like you were still learning how to lie. You thought you could strip me of my dignity in front of my daughter."
Margaret paused, letting the silence settle between them like iron weights.
"The civil suit proceeds to trial next month," Margaret stated with absolute finality. "Every dollar you stole will be clawed back into the Arthur Sterling Foundation. Every piece of jewelry, every car, every bank account. You will leave this prison in eighteen years with nothing to your name but the clothes issued by the Department of Corrections."
Victor began to sob, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably in his orange prison scrubs. "Margaret... please... don't do this to me..."
Margaret hung up the receiver.
She did not wait to hear another word. She stood up, smoothed the front of her coat, and turned her back on him.
As she walked toward the heavy steel exit doors, she felt lighter than she had in years. The ghost of Arthur’s grief had finally been laid to rest. The predator was locked in a cage of his own making.
She stepped out of the correctional center into the brilliant, crisp afternoon sunshine.
Claire was waiting by the curb in Arthur’s classic black Town Car. When she saw Margaret emerge, Claire stepped out, a radiant, genuine smile lighting up her face, and opened the passenger door for her mother.
"How was it?" Claire asked gently as Margaret climbed inside.
Margaret smiled, pulling her seatbelt securely across her chest, feeling the warmth of the autumn sun streaming through the windshield.
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"It was closure, my darling," Margaret said, patting Claire's hand with deep, maternal contentment. "Now, let’s go home. We have a company to run, a foundation to build, and tonight... we are going to enjoy dinner on the very best china Arthur ever bought."
Claire laughed—a sound pure, free, and full of life—and pulled out into the bustling Chicago traffic, leaving the shadow of Victor Vance behind them forever.
