Chapter 14 - The Final Plea
Following the formal entry of their guilty pleas, Judge Holbrook ordered a thirty-minute recess before the sentencing arguments commenced.
Under the provisions of the victim consultation statute, Marcus Vance had secured a private, five-minute conference room meeting between myself and Garrett. It was not required, but Garrett had filed three separate handwritten motions begging the court to allow him to speak with me directly before he was remanded into long-term federal custody.
I agreed to the meeting for one reason only: to close the door myself.
The small attorney-client room in the basement of the courthouse was Spartan and cold. Two armed federal marshals stood by the door, their hands resting on their holsters.
Garrett sat on one side of the metal table, still cuffed, his head resting against his forearms. When the door opened and I walked in, he snapped his head up as if an electric current had surged through his spine.
"Claire..." he gasped, stumbling to his feet, the chains rattling furiously.
"Sit down, Garrett," one of the marshals barked.
Garrett sat down instantly, leaning across the table as far as his restraints would allow.
I pulled out the metal chair opposite him and sat down. I wore a tailored ivory cashmere coat, unbuttoned, showing a simple black silk blouse beneath. My hands rested calmly on the table.
Garrett looked at me like a starving man looking through the window of a bakery.
"Claire... thank you. Thank you for coming down here," he whispered, his eyes red-rimmed, his face gaunt and covered in patchy, uneven stubble. "You look... you look incredible."
I said nothing. I simply looked at him.
"Claire, you have to help me," Garrett pleaded, his voice breaking into a desperate, frantic whisper. "The prosecutor is asking for fourteen years! Holbrook is going to give me the maximum, Claire! You know him! Your family knows him! If you submit a victim impact statement asking for leniency... if you tell the judge that we’ve resolved our financial disputes and that I was under extreme mental distress... he’ll give me probation! He’ll give me home confinement!"
I tilted my head slightly, studying the pathetic creature across from me. "Home confinement? In what home, Garrett? The penthouse you were evicted from? Or the Florida condo that the government is auctioning next week?"
Garrett flinched as if I had struck him across the face.
"We can start over, Claire!" he rushed on, tears spilling over his cheeks. "I know what I did was monstrous! I know I betrayed you! But it was my mother! You saw the evidence! She was pulling the strings! She manipulated me since I was a kid, Claire! She made me believe that if I didn't have thirty million dollars, I wasn't a real man! I was sick! I need therapy, not a federal prison!"
"You weren't sick when you ordered the Chateau Margaux at L’Étoile, Garrett," I said, my voice quiet, even, and terrifyingly cold. "You weren't sick when you held up that bill and told me my marriage was over if I didn't pay for your vanity."
"I was drunk! I lost my temper!"
"You weren't drunk when you leased a Porsche for Chloe Campbell," I continued, cutting through his excuses like a scalpel through dead tissue. "You weren't drunk when you forged my dead father’s signature at 2:00 in the morning while I was sleeping in the next room. You weren't sick. You were just a coward who thought I was too weak to fight back."
Garrett slumped back in his chair, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The frantic energy drained out of him, replaced by a dark, ugly despair.
"You really hate me, don't you?" he muttered, looking up at me through his greasy bangs. "After everything we had... you really don't care if I rot in a cell for fourteen years?"
"I don't hate you, Garrett," I said softly, rising from the table and smoothing down the front of my cashmere coat.
Garrett looked up, a tiny, pathetic flicker of hope reigniting in his eyes. "You don't?"
"No," I replied, meeting his gaze with absolute, unyielding clarity. "Hate requires emotional investment. Hate requires passion. I feel nothing for you, Garrett. To me, you are nothing more than a defaulted business loan that has finally been written off my ledger."
Garrett stared at me, his mouth parting slightly, the realization finally breaking through his thick skull that no amount of charm, no amount of tears, and no amount of manipulation would ever penetrate my armor again.
I turned toward the door.
"Claire! Wait! Don't walk out! Claire!"
I knocked once on the reinforced steel door. The marshal unlocked it from the outside, swinging it open.
May you like
I stepped out into the bright, clean hallway of the courthouse, leaving Garrett Vance screaming my name into the empty concrete room, his cries drowned out by the heavy, definitive click of the locking deadbolt.
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