Chapter 3 - THE HOLDING CELL
The interrogation room at Miramar Naval Base was small, windowless, and smelled heavily of industrial floor wax and stale coffee. A single overhead fluorescent tube flickered hummingly above a heavy iron table bolted into the concrete floor.
Ryan sat in a metal chair, his designer suit wrinkled and stained with sweat, his hair messy, his golden wristwatch removed and placed in an evidence bag on the wall. He had been sitting in total isolation for fourteen hours, deprived of his phone, his lawyer, and his dignity.
The heavy steel door unlocked with a loud, metallic CLANG.
Ryan jumped out of his chair, his hands shaking in his steel handcuffs. "FINALLY! I demand to see my legal counsel! This is an illegal detention! You are violating my constitutional rights!"
I stepped through the doorway.
I was wearing a sharp, dark gray business suit, my hair pulled back into a sleek bun, walking slowly with the aid of a silver-tipped cane to support my healing abdominal muscles. Behind me stepped my father, General Sterling, and Admiral Vance.
Ryan froze. His eyes bulged out of his head as he stared at me.
"Claire?!" he gasped, taking an instinctive step forward before the guard by the door placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, shoving him back into his chair. "Claire! Thank God! Tell these lunatics to let me go! They kidnapped me from our driveway! They put me in chains!"
I walked slowly to the opposite side of the iron table, pulling out the metal chair and sitting down with total, calm composure. My father and Admiral Vance stood behind me like silent stone sentinels.
"Hello, Ryan," I said softly.
"Claire, you have to help me!" Ryan babbled frantically, tears finally spilling down his flushed cheeks. "I didn't mean to leave you! I thought you were just exaggerating! You know how you get! My mother was waiting for me in Santa Barbara, and I couldn't disappoint her—"
"I had a placental abruption, Ryan," I cut him off, my voice so level and quiet that it cut through his frantic babbling like a razor blade.
Ryan swallowed hard, his eyes darting wildly. "A... a what?"
"My placenta separated completely from the wall of my uterus ten minutes after you slammed the front door," I explained calmly. "I lost three liters of blood on our kitchen tile. I crawled through my own blood to reach my phone because my husband was too busy picking out wine pairings for his mother's dinner."
Ryan’s throat worked dryly. "Claire... I... I didn't know—"
"You didn't care," I corrected. "You told me a few more hours wouldn't kill me. Well, it almost did. I was clinically dead on the operating table for two minutes before the surgical team brought me back."
Ryan collapsed back into his chair, pulling his hands up to cover his face, sobbing pathetically. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Claire! I was stupid! I was selfish! But we can fix this! Where is the baby? Is it... is it a boy or a girl? Can I see our child?"
I leaned across the iron table, looking him straight in his bloodshot eyes.
"You don't have a child, Ryan," I said flatly.
Ryan froze, pulling his hands away from his face, his expression melting into pure, unadulterated horror. "What... what do you mean? Did... did the baby die?"
"As far as the law, your family, and your life are concerned," I said, pulling a thick stack of legal documents from my leather briefcase and sliding them across the cold metal surface, "you have no child. You have no wife. And by the end of this week, you will have no home, no career, and no money."
Ryan stared at the document sitting on top of the stack.
It was a petition for full emergency dissolution of marriage, accompanied by a permanent restraining order, a termination of parental rights on grounds of severe criminal abandonment, and an asset freeze order signed by a Federal District Judge.
"You... you can't do this!" Ryan stuttered, his panic rising back into a fury. "You can't strip my parental rights! I have rights as a father!"
"A father doesn't leave his wife to bleed to death while he wires six hundred thousand dollars of her stolen inheritance to buy a beach house for his mother," I said, sliding a second folder across the table.
Ryan’s entire body went limp. He stared at the printouts of his secret wire transfers, his face turning an ash-gray color.
"We audited E&R Holdings yesterday morning, Ryan," Admiral Vance spoke up from behind me, his voice booming like thunder in the small room. "We found four years of systematic tax evasion, corporate fraud, and insider trading executed through your investment firm. The Department of Justice, the SEC, and the IRS have all been formally notified."
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"No..." Ryan whimpered, pressing his forehead against the cold iron table. "No, please... my mother... she had nothing to do with this... it was all my idea..."
"Oh, don't worry about your mother, Ryan," I smiled gently, standing up from the chair with the help of my cane. "We haven't forgotten about Evelyn. In fact, she's receiving her own special birthday surprise right about now."
