Chapter 12 - The Exile of Isabella
Three months later.
The grey winter sky over upstate New York was cold and bleak, dropping thin flurries of dry snow over the barren fields of the rural corrections center near Utica.
Inside the small, sterile visitor room, Isabella sit behind a heavy sheet of scratched plexiglass.
She was wearing a faded grey state prison jumpsuit. Her dark hair was cut short, devoid of styling or color, revealing prominent silver roots. Her face was thin, gaunt, her skin pale and dry under the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. The manicured diamond-adorned hands that had once held crystal dessert forks at L’Oasis were now raw and red from hard daily chores in the prison laundry wing.
On the other side of the glass sat Vincent Rizzo, dressed in his dark wool overcoat, holding a small manila envelope.
Isabella picked up the plastic intercom phone with a trembling, thin hand.
“Vincent,” she rasped, her voice dry and hollow. “Vincent, please… tell me Dominic sent you. Tell me he’s signing the bail appeal.”
Vincent picked up his phone, his scarred face completely devoid of expression.
“Dominic didn't send me to sign a bail appeal, Isabella,” Vincent said, his voice flat through the plastic speaker. “He sent me to deliver the final decree from the family court.”
Vincent opened the manila envelope, pulling out a three-page legal document stamped with the red seal of the New York State Supreme Court, and pressed it flat against the plexiglass window.
“Your marriage to Dominic Salvatore has been officially annulled on grounds of grand corporate fraud, identity misrepresentation, and criminal conspiracy,” Vincent read cleanly. “All secondary claims to the Salvatore estate, property holdings, and trust funds have been permanently revoked.”
Tears of pure, desperate agony welled in Isabella’s hollow eyes, spilling over her dry cheeks.
“No… no!” she wept, tapping her forehead against the scratched glass. “I built that life with him! I gave him six years of my life!”
“You gave him six years of lies, Isabella,” Vincent said, unblinking. “And you stole six years from Elena Vance. Now, you’re going to spend the next twenty-two years in this facility paying the state back for every dollar you took.”
Isabella looked up through the glass, her chin trembling violently. “Where is she? Where is Elena?”
Vincent took a slow, deep breath, a tiny, cold smile touching the corner of his scarred lip.
“Miss Vance is currently in Milan,” Vincent reported, his tone filled with absolute, unyielding respect. “Opening the secondary European headquarters of Salvatore & Vance Global. She’s wearing a coat worth more than your entire annual commissary allowance, sitting at the head of a board table that controls thirty shipping ports across the Mediterranean.”
Vincent set the phone back on its hook, stood up from his chair, and adjusted his coat collar.
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“Enjoy your winter, Isabella,” Vincent said quietly through the mesh screen.
He turned his back on the crying woman, his heavy steps echoing off the cinderblock walls as he walked out into the cold white snow.
