Chapter 37 - The Ghost Fades
Miles away, locked deep within the grim, concrete walls of the state penitentiary, the sounds of the gala did not reach Teresa Sterling.
She sat on the edge of her thin, uncomfortable prison cot, staring blankly at the gray, peeling paint of her tiny cell.
There were no silk sheets. There were no servants to answer her demands. There was only the harsh, fluorescent lighting and the constant, terrifying noise of the cell block.
She had tried to manipulate the guards, offering them imaginary bribes from bank accounts that no longer existed. They had simply laughed at her.
She was completely, utterly irrelevant.
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She had sacrificed her son, her freedom, and her humanity on the altar of her own arrogant pride, and in return, the universe had given her absolutely nothing but a cold, metal toilet and forty-five years of agonizing silence.
The matriarch of the Sterling empire had faded into an anonymous, pathetic ghost, entirely forgotten by the world she had once tried to violently control.
