Chapter 12 - THE CONFRONTATION IN BUTNER
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The heavy steel security doors of the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner slammed shut with a concussive boom that vibrated through the concrete walls.
The visiting room was sterile, cold, and smelled of industrial floor wax and stale despair.
I sat behind a partition of reinforced Plexiglas, wearing a charcoal wool overcoat and leather gloves.
Sitting on the other side of the glass, wearing a bright-orange prison jumpsuit, was Julian Graves.
His transformation over the past two months was devastating.
His expensive haircut had been shaved to a rough prison buzz.
His soft, pampered hands were covered in rough calluses from kitchen duty.
The arrogant swagger of the Queen City Club had been completely erased, replaced by the hollow, haunted stare of a broken man.
He picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with trembling fingers.
I picked up mine, leaning back in my chair.
“Nathan,” Julian whispered through the static of the line.
“Please.”
“You have to get me out of here.”
“The men in this block... they know who I am.”
“They know the Graves family has money.”
“I can't survive another month in this place.”
I looked at him through the scratched glass, my expression as cold and unchanging as granite.
“You have twenty-four years remaining on your sentence, Julian,” I said, my voice flat and emotionless.
“You should get used to the routine.”
Julian pressed his face against the glass, tears welling in his red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m your blood, Nathan!” he choked out.
“We grew up together!”
“Our fathers built that empire side by side!”
“How can you leave me in a cage over a bunch of maids and drivers?”
“Those maids and drivers built the roof you slept under,” I replied, each word hitting him like a hammer.
“They worked sixteen-hour shifts while you drank scotch on stolen money.”
“You didn't just steal from them, Julian.”
“You tried to have an eighteen-year-old girl murdered in the mud because you couldn't stand the thought of being exposed.”
Julian looked down at his cuffed wrists, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
“Is she... is she still at the house?” he asked weakly.
“Annie Carter doesn't clean houses anymore, Julian,” I told him, a faint, proud smile touching my lips.
“She is the chief technology officer of the Graves-Carter Bionics Center.”
“She just signed a forty-two-million-dollar contract with the Department of Defense.”
“Her patent is being manufactured in three countries.”
“And every single penny of the restitution you owe will be deducted from your commissary account until the day you die.”
Julian stared at me in utter disbelief, the realization of what he had thrown away crashing down upon his soul.
He had tried to crush an invisible girl to save himself eighty-seven hundred dollars.
In doing so, he had handed her the world and condemned himself to a concrete box.
“Nathan... please,” he begged one last time, pressing his open palm against the glass.
“Tell me you’ll visit again.”
I slowly set the plastic telephone receiver back onto its metal cradle.
I stood up, buttoning my overcoat over my chest.
May you like
I didn't say another word.
I turned my back on the glass partition and walked out through the heavy steel security doors, leaving Julian Graves to the silence of his own making.
