Chapter 137: Welcome to Hell
Liam’s POV
The fluorescent lights buzzed across the concrete walls of my cell. Three days. It had been three days since Judge Thompson’s gavel had sealed my fate, three days since I’d been processed, fingerprinted, photographed, and stripped of everything that had once defined me.
Holbrook had visited yesterday, his face a mask of barely contained fury and professional embarrassment. The conversation replayed in my mind like a broken record, each word a fresh wound.
"You’re all over the news, Liam," he’d said, his voice tight with controlled anger. "Congratulations. You’re trending on every social media platform. ’Disgraced CEO Sentenced to three years in prison,’’Pregnant Wife’s Courage Pays Off.’ Pick your favorite headline."
I’d sat across from him in the sterile visiting room, wearing the orange jumpsuit that had become my uniform, feeling smaller and more insignificant than I’d ever felt in my life.
"The worst part," Holbrook had continued, leaning forward with fury in his eyes, "isn’t just that you lied to me. It’s that you made me look like a fool in front of Judge Thompson. Do you have any idea how humiliating it was to stand in that courtroom, unprepared, while evidence I’d never seen before was presented against my own client?"
"Do you know what they’re saying about me? About how I couldn’t protect my own client because he kept me in the dark about his criminal activities?"
"I’m sorry," I’d whispered, the words pathetic even to my own ears.
"Sorry doesn’t fix my reputation, Liam. Sorry doesn’t undo the damage you’ve caused. I’ve been practicing law for twenty-five years, and I’ve never been blindsided like that."
He’d stood to leave, then turned back one final time. "You’re on your own now. Don’t contact me again."
And now here I was, alone in a six-by-eight concrete box, listening to the sounds of prison life filtering through the thin walls. Shouting voices, slamming doors, the constant echo of footsteps on concrete floors. This was my world now. This was my life for the next three years.