Chapter 10 - Salt on the Wound
Six months later.
The spring in New York was unusually warm. The cherry blossoms in Central Park had bloomed early, scattering soft pink petals across the paved walkways and emerald lawns.
I stood on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, wearing a tailored cream trench coat and dark sunglasses. The press was gathered on the steps, their cameras flashing like strobe lights against the granite pillars.
Today was sentencing day.
Ryan was led out through the side entrance in an orange prison jumpsuit, his hands shackled to a heavy leather belt around his waist.
He was thinner now. His hair, once thick and styled, had been buzzed down to the scalp, revealing the uneven shape of his skull. The golden-boy glow was completely gone, replaced by the gray, sunken pallor of a man who had spent six months eating cafeteria food in the Metropolitan Detention Center.
He received seven years at a federal correctional facility in upstate New York.
Julianna had received probation and a multi-million-dollar fine that her father paid without blinking, though she was permanently exiled to her family's compound in Switzerland, her social standing completely obliterated.
Natalie had taken a plea deal: eighteen months in a low-security camp in Pennsylvania, followed by three years of supervised release and permanent forfeiture of her marketing license.
As the marshals guided Ryan toward the transport van, his eyes swept over the small crowd of onlookers.
He stopped.
Through the sea of reporters, lawyers, and spectators, his gaze locked onto mine.
For five seconds, the world seemed to stop spinning.
He didn't scream. He didn't curse. He looked at me with an expression that was hollow, shattered, and utterly bankrupt. He saw a woman who wasn't crying, who wasn't broken, and who had taken every single piece of his life and rebuilt it into a fortress he could never touch again.
I didn't smile. I didn't flip him off.
I slowly lifted my left hand, rested it against my own left hip—the exact spot where his secret scar was carved—and held his gaze until the marshals shoved him into the back of the dark van.
The heavy steel doors slammed shut with a final, echoing crash.
The engine turned over, the exhaust puffed white into the spring air, and the van pulled away into the Manhattan traffic, disappearing behind a sea of yellow cabs and glass buildings.
I turned around, walked down the steps toward the subway, and let the warm spring sun wash over my face.
For seven years, I had lived in the shadow of a secret that wasn't mine.
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Now, the secret was dead.
And for the first time in my life, I was completely, beautifully, and irreversibly free.
