Chapter 19 - Shadows in the Rearview
Two years after the Vanguard Health scandal, a brief news item appeared on the back pages of the Chicago legal gazette.
FEDERAL PRISONER TRANSFER: JULIAN VANCE RELOCATED TO LOW-SECURITY FACILITY FOLLOWING MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION.
Julian’s high-priced criminal attorneys had exhausted every possible appeal. His attempts to reduce his nine-year sentence based on claims of executive stress and mental breakdown were systematically rejected by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Victoria Vance was currently serving the final months of her three-year state sentence at a women’s correctional facility in downstate Illinois, working in the prison laundry, her former corporate ambitions permanently extinguished.
Clara showed me the news clipping over lunch at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Chicago.
"Do you ever think about him?" Clara asked softly, watching my expression as I scanned the brief paragraph.
"Only when a court notice arrives in the mail," I answered truthfully, setting the clipping aside and taking a sip of my iced tea. "Otherwise... he feels like a character in a book I finished reading a long time ago."
"No lingering anger?"
"Anger takes energy, Clara," I smiled gently. "And my energy belongs to my life now. Julian spent eleven years trying to make himself the center of my universe. The ultimate victory isn't hating him. It's making him entirely irrelevant."
Clara looked at me, her eyes shining with profound pride. "You really are free, Elena."
May you like
"Yes," I said, looking across the street at the bustling entrance of my design studio, where two of my lead architects were carrying a set of fresh blueprints into the building. "I am."
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