6. The First Deep Breath
A year later.
Julian Vance was no longer a visionary CEO. He was inmate number 84729, serving a twenty-year, hard-labor sentence in a medium-security federal penitentiary.
The man who had been violently obsessed with tailoring his public image to absolute, unyielding perfection, the man who had dictated the exact cut and fabric of my dresses to maintain his aesthetic, was now wearing a shapeless, faded orange jumpsuit that didn’t fit him properly.
He was completely, utterly forgotten by the ruthless, fast-paced corporate world that had once worshipped him. His name was a cautionary tale, a stain on the history of Vanguard Holdings.
As for me, the contrast was absolute.
I had sold the massive, sprawling, suffocating estate in the suburbs. I sold the expensive, restrictive designer gowns, the heavy jewelry, and every single item he had ever purchased to control my appearance. I purged my life of his presence completely.
I took the massive civil settlement and bought a small, beautiful, sunlit house perched on a cliff near the coast in Maine.
It didn’t have heavy, soundproofed oak doors. It didn’t have biometric security cameras tracking my movements. It had large, open windows that let in the bright sunlight and the smell of the salt air.
