Chapter 7 - The Plea Bargain War
Two weeks later.
The state prosecutor handling the criminal case, District Attorney Robert Vance (no relation to Daniel), called me into his corner office overlooking the city harbor.
Robert dropped two settlement proposal documents onto his desk.
"Vanessa Cole's defense team is offering a full confession," Robert informed me. "She's willing to plead guilty to felony conspiracy and testify against Daniel in exchange for a seven-year sentence."
"And what is Daniel offering?" I asked, sipping green tea.
"Daniel is trying to throw Vanessa completely under the bus," Robert laughed bitterly. "His lawyer claims Vanessa was the sole mastermind, that she manipulated him, bought the drugs, and laced the wine without his full knowledge."
"The cloud recording refutes that entirely," I noted. "He explicitly asked her, 'Is that enough?'"
"Precisely," Robert agreed. "Which is why I rejected his plea deal. The Grand Jury just returned an indictment on Attempted First-Degree Murder."
"What about the federal wire fraud case?"
"The U.S. Attorney's office is running their trial concurrently," Robert explained. "They have a paper trail showing Daniel personally signed eighteen fraudulent loan applications using your identity. He's looking at twenty-five years in federal prison before he even starts serving time for the state attempted murder charge."
"Good," I said, putting my tea down. "I want no deal for either of them that doesn't include full restitution of every dollar stolen from my family's estate."
"They don't have leverage anyway, Claire," Robert smiled. "Yesterday, Vanessa's public defender admitted she's turning state's evidence regardless of the plea, simply to avoid being named as a co-defendant in the federal embezzlement suit."
The house of cards Daniel had built on lies, arrogance, and greed was collapsing inward, crushing both him and his mistress under the weight of their own ambition.
Later that afternoon, I visited the county jail for the first and only time.
I sat behind a thick glass partition in the visitor's room.
Daniel was led in by two guards. He looked like a shell of his former self—his eyes sunken, his designer clothes replaced by coarse grey prison scrubs, his hands shaking as he lifted the heavy plastic telephone receiver.
"Claire," he choked out, his eyes welling with tears. "Please... please help me. I can't survive in here."
"You should have thought about that before you put poison in my glass, Daniel," I said, my voice carrying zero emotion through the speaker.
"It wasn't poison!" he cried out, banging his hand against the glass. "Vanessa told me it was just a mild relaxant! I swear to God, Claire, I didn't know it was lethal! I loved you!"
"You didn't love me, Daniel," I replied calmly, looking straight into his broken eyes. "You loved my money. You loved my family's status. And you loved the idea that you were clever enough to steal it from under my nose."
"I'll sign the divorce papers!" he pleaded frantically. "I'll give you the house! I'll give you everything! Just talk to the DA! Tell them it was a domestic misunderstanding!"
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"The house is already mine, Daniel," I reminded him softly. "The judge granted my emergency petition for full asset separation yesterday. You own nothing. You are nothing."
I hung up the telephone receiver, stood up, and walked away as Daniel slammed his fists against the glass, screaming my name into an empty room.
