Chapter 27 - The Abyss
The world moved on quickly, as it always does.
Vanessa’s fate was sealed in the maximum-security women's facility in Cañon City. Without her beauty, her expensive clothes, and her manipulative charm, she was nothing more than a weak, terrified inmate. The prison gossip network moved faster than the internet; every woman in her cell block knew exactly why she was there. Child abusers sit at the absolute bottom of the prison hierarchy.
According to Marcus, who kept an eye on her file just to ensure she suffered, Vanessa spent twenty-three hours a day locked in protective solitary confinement for her own safety. She had lost her mind, muttering to herself in the dark, constantly complaining to the guards about her ruined nails and terrible food. She was living the exact nightmare she had inflicted on my daughter.
Grant fared even worse. The former millionaire CEO who used to dine on caviar and command boardrooms was assigned to the prison laundry detail. He spent ten hours a day washing soiled uniforms in a humid, concrete basement, earning twelve cents an hour—every penny of which was automatically seized by the state to pay the massive civil judgment he owed my daughter.
He received no visitors. No mail. His high-society friends had entirely forgotten he existed, scrubbing his name from their contact lists like a nasty virus. His parents had publicly disowned him after the trial.
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He was a ghost trapped in a cage of his own making. He would die in that concrete box, completely isolated, haunted by the memory of the golden life he had foolishly thrown away for a momentary thrill and a sadistic mistress.
Justice wasn't just blind; it was exquisitely, flawlessly balanced. The people who had tried to break my family were permanently broken themselves. And now, I could finally focus entirely on healing.
