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“It might have been an option, if you did not have three dead husbands in your past. You go down that road, and the authorities could start exhuming bodies.”
Fiona frowned. “They died in accidents.”
“But your word means nothing now, and trying to sell that story to a jury would be impossible, since in this instance, you hired hit men to do your dirty work, using multiple identities to hide the payoffs, and were on husband number four when you tried to kill him with a bomb they can prove you built. Did they not tell you? The search warrants at your home and office yielded trace evidence of bomb material in both places, and then there’s the security footage of you purchasing supplies to build it. And for what? Money you don’t need. In thepublic eye, that’s not mental illness, that’s greed. Go to trial, and they’ll persecute you. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court, and either way, you’re in prison for life, or until they set a date for your execution.”
She started weeping. “This isn’t fair,” she moaned.
“Neither is murder,” Ryker said. “You have left a wake of unfairness behind you.”
“So do I go to trial?”
“It’s your call. You can pay me tens of thousands of dollars to fight this, and I’ll take it because it’s my job to represent you. We can file motions and injunctions for years, and I’ll get rich, but you’re never going free. Can you make peace with a women’s prison?”
“But I have skills! Valuable skills. I help doctors save people’s lives,” Fiona argued.
Ryker sighed. “Then why wasn’t that enough?”
She looked away, unwilling to answer. She couldn’t bring herself to admit it had all become a game. A way to prove to men that she was smarter than them. She couldn’t come right out and say that because it wouldn’t fit with being crazy. It would make her like the men she reviled. Mowing down the competition to become “king of the hill.”
She shrugged. “Then it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I will not be dragged through the court of public opinion. If they’ll grant me solitary confinement, I’ll take the judge’s decision. Otherwise, there will be bloodshed in every cell I occupy with someone else. Eventually, we all die. Some sooner than later.”
Ryker gathered up his things and left.
Fiona was taken back to her cell. The cell that left nothing to the imagination. It took the meaning ofone-room flatto a whole new level. Eat. Sleep. Wash. Shit. All in a room smaller than her walk-in closet.
She’d made her decision. Her future was settled.
Or so she thought until she got word she had a visitor and found herself face-to-face with Wolfgang Outen and, in that moment, profoundly grateful to be on the other side of the wall, looking at him through a plexiglass window.
His eyes narrowed as he pointed to the phone on the wall beside her.
It was a challenge, and she knew it. She didn’t have to talk to him, but it was her last chance to poke the bear, so she picked up the phone, expecting to hear rage. Expecting accusations. Expecting anything but the soft, chilling whisper in her ear.
“You fucked with the wrong man. You put out your last hit. Make peace with the Lord. You’re already dead and don’t know it.”
Then he hung up the phone and walked out.
Her mouth was open in a scream that never emerged. Her brain was on fire and there was nowhere to run. When her bladder gave way, she couldn’t stop it. Wolf Outen had shattered her bravado with a look and a whisper.
The walk back to her cell with pee running down her legs was as humiliating as the wet spot on the back ofher scrubs. When they locked the door behind her, she crawled into bed and curled up in a ball, wondering when it would happen. Who would he pay to do it? A guard? Maybe another inmate? How would she die? Knifed? Poisoned? Attacked by a gang?
The possibilities were endless, but her days were ending, and it was the most horrible feeling on earth to know that this was no longer her choice. Her death would be a murder, and the irony was not wasted.
Wolf left the prison feeling the satisfaction as if he’d just plunged the knife into her himself. Because she’d done it to others, she fully believed he would have it done to her, and that was his revenge.
The doubt he’d put in her head.
That she was no longer in charge of her own destiny.
That alone would be what killed her.
She wouldn’t trust the food she was given. She wouldn’t trust the inmates or the guards, and if there was any justice in the world, she’d stress herself to death.
The weight of guilt was off his shoulders. His last goal in life was making sure the rest of hers was hell.
He was on his way back to his Miami estate, wondering what was going on with the Sao Paulo disaster, and tried calling Ruiz again. It went straight to voicemail, which made him anxious. Ruiz had been afraid for his life. What if someone had gotten to him? When hegot back to the office tomorrow, he would call the local authorities. They could at least update him on what had happened to the refinery.
His housekeeper, Dee, was in tears when he walked in, elated to see him alive and well, and at the same time, distraught at finding out Fiona’s true nature.
