CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 42 — The Prison Visit
With twenty hours left before the account activation deadline, Valeria didn't stay in Spain. She boarded a private charter flight back to Chicago. She didn't return to see her father, nor did she go to the Phoenix Alliance loft. Instead, she drove straight to a fortress of concrete and steel she swore she would never look at again: the Cook County Maximum-Security Facility.
Sitting behind the thick, scratched Plexiglas window of the high-security visitor block, Julian Moreno appeared in a standard orange jumpsuit. He had lost significant weight; the arrogant, high-society smile was gone, replaced by hollow cheeks and dark, bloodshot eyes. Yet, the moment he saw Valeria, a disturbing, dry laugh escaped his lips.
"You saw it, didn't you, Val?" Julian pressed his handcuffed hands against the glass, his chains rattling loudly. "I told you. I didn't beat you because I wanted to steal your money. I wanted that money because I knew what was hiding beneath it! My mother, Ofelia... she was just a pawn hired by your mother to monitor you in America!"
Valeria stared at him, her face an unreadable mask. "How long did you know, Julian?"
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"The night I struck you for the first time," Julian whispered, his eyes widening with a manic intensity. "I broke into my mother's private safe and found our marriage blueprint. Our marriage wasn't an accident, Valeria. It was a transaction. Your mother paid my family millions to ensure that I would break you. She needed you traumatized, weak, and entirely codependent so you would never be stable enough to look closely at your inheritance!"
Valeria felt a profound, chilling disgust crawl up her spine. The systemic violence she had endured for years hadn't been the random outbursts of an abusive husband. It had been a carefully engineered psychological prison designed to keep her blind to her own power.
