Chapter 14
Chapter 14: The Final Confession
A year into their sentence, I received an unexpected request. Mauricio De la Vega wanted to see me.
I almost threw the prison visitation letter in the trash, but a small part of me needed to see the final product of my work. I drove to the maximum-security penitentiary outside the city limits.
We met in a sterile room, separated by a thick pane of reinforced glass. Mauricio picked up the heavy black telephone on his side. I picked up mine.
He looked terrible. He had lost at least twenty pounds, his skin was pale, and a dark, jagged scar ran across his jawline—a violent souvenir from his new life behind bars.
"Why did you come?" he rasped, his voice lacking any of the bravado that used to echo through the halls of San Pedro.
"You asked me to," I replied coldly.
Mauricio leaned his forehead against the glass. "I just... I needed to know. For three years, you opened my doors. You carried my luggage. You smiled at me in the rearview mirror. How did you not kill me in my sleep? How did you have the patience to dismantle everything we had, piece by piece?"
I looked at the ruined heir of the De la Vega fortune. He still didn't understand.
"Because a quick death is a mercy," I said evenly. "If I had killed you, you would have died a rich, arrogant martyr. I needed you to live. I needed you to wake up every morning in a concrete box, stripped of your name, your money, and your power, and remember that you were put there by the very man you treated like a ghost."
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Mauricio closed his eyes, a single tear escaping to trace a path through the grime on his cheek.
I hung up the phone and walked away without looking back. He was no longer my problem. He was just a ghost haunting a cell.
