Chapter 5 - The Glass Fortress
For the next four days, the world watched in awe as Christian Prescott transformed into America's ultimate icon of tragic devotion.
From my private, high-security room on the twelfth floor of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's restricted surgical wing in Chicago, I watched him on the muted flat-screen television mounted across from my bed.
He was everywhere.
On Tuesday, he appeared on The Today Show, wearing a simple black turtleneck, his face pale, his voice trembling as he spoke about the burden of seeing his beloved fiancée behind hospital glass.
"It's hard," he told the interviewer, his eyes glistening with perfectly timed tears. "The doctors say the trauma is deep. She doesn't always recognize me when she opens her eyes. But I don't care about the scars. Physical beauty fades, but my soul belongs to Genevieve. I will stand by her side for the rest of my life."
The interviewer wept on air. The hashtag #PrayForGenevieve trended number one globally on X for seventy-two consecutive hours. Donations to the newly created "Prescott-Vance Hope Foundation" surpassed three million dollars in forty-eight hours.
"He really is a magnificent actor," Dr. Evelyn Reed remarked quietly, stepping into my room holding a tray of surgical instruments and fresh, specialized medical dressings.
Dr. Reed was a woman in her late forties, with sharp grey eyes, dark hair tied back in a neat bun, and hands that had performed some of the most complex facial reconstructions in North America. Over the past ninety-six hours, she had operated on my face twice, executing delicate skin debridement and applying advanced tissue-regeneration matrices to prevent deep muscular necrosis.
"How does the right cheek look today, Evelyn?" I asked, my voice much stronger now, though my jaw was still partially immobilized by medical tape.
"Better than it had any right to," Evelyn said, adjusting her surgical light over my face. "The acid Christian's hitman used was industrial-grade, but because you immediately flushed it with cold water at the scene before losing consciousness, the deep dermal layer survived in key areas. We've harvested skin grafts from your upper thigh. In six months, with laser therapy, the scarring will be minimal."
"No," I said, looking directly into her grey eyes. "I don't want it minimal yet."
Evelyn paused, her gloved hands holding a pair of medical forceps. "Genevieve, as a surgeon, my job is to restore your aesthetic integrity as fully as possible."
"And as my doctor, your job right now is to keep me alive and functional," I replied calmly. "I need the scar on my right cheekbone down to my jawline to remain clearly visible for the next two weeks. I need it red, raw, and undeniable."
Evelyn stared at me for a moment, then let out a long, quiet sigh. "Elias warned me you were made of iron. Fine. I will pause the cosmetic smoothing treatments until after next week. But the underlying structural tissue is healed enough for you to move and speak without permanent damage."
"Thank you," I said.
The door to the room opened silently, and Elias walked in. He was wearing a dark navy suit, carrying a sleek silver briefcase. Behind him stepped a woman in her late thirties wearing a sharp charcoal skirt suit and glasses—Maya Lin, Vance Corporate Intelligence’s chief forensic accountant.
"We have the complete digital dive on Lawson and Sabrina," Elias announced, setting his briefcase on the table and opening it.
Maya stepped forward, adjusting her glasses and laying out several thick financial flowcharts over my bed tray.
"Let's start with Dr. Lawson," Maya said, her tone brisk and professional. "My team executed a remote mirror of his private clinic's server three nights ago. We retrieved thirty-six months of altered medical records. Here is the smoking gun."
She pointed a long nail at a high-resolution printout of a prescription log.
"For three years, every time you visited Dr. Lawson for your 'post-conception hormone therapy,' he administered a compound called Methotrexate in low, chronic doses under the label of 'vitamin boosters.' Methotrexate is an immunosuppressant commonly used in chemotherapy, but in small, continuous doses during early pregnancy, it guarantees an immediate, spontaneous miscarriage."
I stared at the medical log. Methotrexate.
Seeing the physical proof printed on white paper hit me like a physical punch to the solar plexus. Three babies. Three lives wiped out before they could draw their first breath, all so Christian wouldn't have his touring schedule disrupted and could keep his image as a childless, romantic artist.
"Lawson received four hundred thousand dollars in off-shore wire transfers from an account in the Cayman Islands registered to 'Prescott Productions LLC' over that three-year period," Maya continued. "We have the bank routing numbers, the authorization signatures bearing Christian's digital key, and Lawson's personal ledger notes explicitly referencing 'patient G. Vance - pregnancy termination management.'"
"That's medical battery, forced abortion, and criminal conspiracy," Elias added grimly. "Lawson will lose his medical license and spend twenty years in a federal penitentiary. The FBI medical fraud division already has the files sealed in a blind folder, waiting for our green light."
"And Sabrina?" I asked, forcing my voice to remain cold, burying the grief deep beneath my armor.
Maya flipped to the next section of the chart.
"Sabrina Highsmith has been living a very comfortable life," Maya said. "Over the past four years, Christian has funneled roughly eight million dollars out of your joint business accounts into her Florida LLC. He used funds that were co-mingled from your grandfather's original investment trust to purchase her Naples estate, two luxury yachts, and a private jet membership."
Maya looked up at me with a cold smile. "Because those funds were taken from an irrevocable joint trust without your written authorization or knowledge, every single purchase constitutes grand larceny and embezzlement under Indiana and federal law. When we file the civil asset recovery lawsuit, we can seize every single asset Sabrina owns—including her house, her cars, and her accounts—within twenty-four hours."
"What about their wedding in Key West?" I asked.
Elias pulled a sleek tablet from his jacket and tapped the screen, showing a high-resolution satellite map of a private ten-acre oceanfront estate near Little Torch Key.
"The wedding is set for this coming Tuesday at 4:00 p.m.," Elias said. "It's an ultra-exclusive affair. Only twelve guests—Sabrina's immediate family, her close friends, and Christian's private inner circle. Christian told his team he's taking a 'three-day retreat into the mountains to pray for Genevieve's recovery.' In reality, he's flying his private jet down to Key West on Monday night."
"He thinks he's home free," I murmured, watching the satellite view of the sunny Florida estate.
"He thinks you're currently lying in a hospital bed in Columbus under sedation, barely able to speak," Elias said. "Gabriel has been sending him forged daily medical updates from St. Jude Medical Center confirming that your condition remains 'critical but stable.' Christian has no idea you were moved to Chicago three hours after the attack."
"And the wedding venue?" I asked. "Is it private property?"
"It belongs to a luxury resort firm," Elias grinned wolfishly. "A firm that Vance Corporate Intelligence happened to acquire controlling shares in yesterday morning. We own the ground he's walking on, Genny. We own the security staff, the catering team, the harbor docks, and the airspace above the property."
I slowly lifted my hand, gently tracing the dark red, raised scar line that ran down my right cheekbone. It felt rough, thick, and alien. But it no longer felt like a mark of shame or victimhood.
It felt like a war medal.
"Elias," I said, turning my single clear eye toward my cousin. "Have the legal teams prepare the full indictment package. Asset seizures, federal criminal complaints, civil fraud suits, and medical battery charges."
"When do we serve them?" Elias asked.
May you like
I looked back at the muted television screen, where Christian was currently receiving a fake award for humanitarian devotion from a local civic group in Indianapolis.
"We don't serve them through a sheriff's deputy in a dark office," I whispered. "We serve them at the altar."
