Chapter 18 - The Viper in the Cell
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Deep within the damp, grey concrete walls of the Santa Marta Maximum Security Penitentiary, life moved at a agonizingly slow pace.
Valeria sat on a cold, rusted iron cot inside a tiny six-by-eight cell. Her glowing blonde hair had grown out, revealing dark, greasy roots. Her polished nails were broken and bitten down to the quick. She wore a faded, oversized orange jumpsuit that smelled of cheap bleach and damp cement.
The high-society queen who had once ordered servants around with a snap of her fingers was now forced to scrub cafeteria floors with a stiff bristle brush.
"Inmate 4409!" a harsh female guard shouted, rattling her nightstick against the heavy iron bars of the cell door. "You have a legal visitor. You have five minutes."
Valeria jumped up, a sudden spark of hope igniting in her chest.
It’s my lawyer, she thought frantically, running her hands through her messy hair. He finally found a loophole! He's going to get me out!
She was led through a series of locked steel doors into a small, dimly lit visitation room divided by thick, bulletproof glass.
Valeria sat down on the hard plastic stool and picked up the heavy black telephone receiver.
On the other side of the glass sat a man wearing a dark, tailored suit and black leather gloves. He was not her defense attorney. His face was shadowed, but his cold, calculating posture radiated an intense, lethal authority.
"Who are you?" Valeria asked, her voice raspy from disuse. "Where is my lawyer?"
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The man smiled—a slow, terrifying grin that made Valeria's stomach drop into a pit of ice.
"Your lawyer was fired this morning, Valeria," the man said softly into his receiver. His accent was smooth, cultured, and distinctly European. "I am here on behalf of our mutual associates in Zurich."
