Chapter 9 - Behind Bars and Broken WillsTwo weeks later, Daniel sat in the visitor's booth of the federal detention center in Brooklyn. The glass partition separated him from his mother.
Evelyn Reed looked unrecognizable. The silver chignon was gone, her hair limp and unwashed. She wore a drab orange jumpsuit, her skin pale and wrinkled without the makeup and expensive treatments she had relied on for decades. She looked old, defeated, and bitter.
"You came to gloat," she said, her voice raspy through the intercom.
"I came to bring you some papers," Daniel said, sliding a document into the slot beneath the glass. "These are the final divorce papers for your marriage to my father’s estate. Since you were convicted of felony kidnapping and fraud against the estate, the court has invalidated your pre-nuptial agreements. You are officially broke, Evelyn."
Evelyn laughed, a dry, bitter cackle. "Broke? I still have my name. I still have my pride."
"Your name is mud, Mother," Daniel said quietly. "Nobody in New York will speak to you. Your 'friends' have already deleted your number. The charities you ran have scrubbed your name from their buildings. You are a ghost, just like you tried to make Sarah."
Evelyn’s eyes flashed with anger. "She was a nobody! A middle-class girl who thought she could walk into our world and take what was ours! I did what any mother would do to protect her son's inheritance!"
"You didn't protect me," Daniel said, his voice thick with emotion. "You kept me in a living hell for two years. You watched me break down. You held me while I cried over a grave you dug for a living woman. You are not a mother, Evelyn. You're a monster."
"You'll never survive without me, Daniel," she hissed, leaning against the glass. "The board will eat you alive. The press will destroy you."
"The board is already gone," Daniel said, standing up. "I replaced them all. And the press is actually quite fond of us. Sarah is running the foundation now, and she’s doing a much better job than you ever did. And Grace... Grace is walking, Evelyn. She’s going to grow up in a house filled with love, not ambition. And she will never, ever know who you are."
May you like
He picked up the phone receiver, hanging it up on the hook, cutting off her voice. He watched as she banged on the glass, her face contorted in a silent scream of rage, before the guards grabbed her arms and dragged her back to her cell.
Daniel turned and walked out into the cold, crisp winter air. He took a deep breath, the taste of freedom sweeter than anything he had ever known.
