Chapter 1

Jeremy stared at the woman with the snarl on her face. Her blond hair was being flung around and her pointed finger cut the air in front of him. The cost of those manicured nails and pampered tresses was unbelievable. The cost of her makeup alone would probably bankrupt several neighborhoods of the working poor.

He couldn't move. The nerve block had paralyzed all of the muscles below his neck. Sitting before his wife and a number of strangers in a diaper should have been humiliating, but Jeremy decided that dignity was an overrated concept in the present circumstances.

He was thinking, Damn, that bitch can spend credits.

In just a few more minutes, Jeremy Hamilton would cease to be, by order of the court. His eyes were drooping tiredly. Maybe they had given him tranqs to slow him down.

The walls were an institutional grey, probably centimeter-thick plastick, one of his most popular products for home, business and government. It took a combination of malic acid and ultraviolet light to break them down. Malic acid could be easily derived from apples, which made plastick a highly desirable building material. It was recyclable. He believed in recycling, which is how he had made his fortune.

The woman was still yelling. Her expensive dress suit was restricting her movements which humored him.

That's the price that fashion inflicts on those who must wear buttercup yellow to the most private of occasions, Jeremy thought with dry humor. The color was grating on his nerves and had been for years. She knew it too, the bitch ... He made a half-hearted bet with himself that if she kept flapping her arms she would pop the top button on her blouse.

God, she has great tits, he thought. She had always had great tits. They weren't huge or anything of that nature. They were round and firm. Or at least they used to be. She'd had two kids. He wasn't quite sure if he was remembering recent or ancient memories. Her legs weren't bad either. He didn't look at them though. He couldn't because the restraining collar held his chin up. He liked the idea of keeping his chin up even though it was useless gesture.

Am I drooling? Jeremy asked himself.

The woman in front of him was his wife. She had thought that she could take all of his billions of credits for herself when he was zapped. At the moment he couldn't remember how he had managed to keep all but a mere twenty million out of her hands, but the fact made him proud. Jeremy was sure that it had been twenty million, wondering why that number was important. He hadn't left anything for their two brats either.

She wanted the rest of the money.

"Where is the money?" she must have been screaming at him.

He hoped that she wrenched her vocal chords and that her face froze in that particular panicked, vitriolic expression.

I die and you suffer, bitch, all the days of your life. All those billions are sitting somewhere and you will never touch them. I hope the thought eats a hole in your stomach, slowly, every day sapping all the joy out of your life. Die a little each day for me, you bitch, Jeremy thought, although when he tried to speak the words, all that came out of his mouth was an insignificant moan.

She was pleading with him. She had her eyebrows raised and a sad puppy look. Jeremy judged that clowns could not have given a better performance.

Suddenly he remembered. He had known that she was going to move against him for at least two years. He had matched her move for move even as he had managed his reclamation empire. Then she had pulled off a feat that he had not anticipated. Business, government corruption, blackmail: he knew how to deal with all of them. Power grabs and corporate takeovers were mundane transactions. He had planned for each of these possibilities.

Still, he had been paranoid enough to put a failsafe switch on his personal fortune. Each morning he had to re-enter a code on his failsafe program or all of his money would seemingly disappear into the void. Jeremy had been anticipating assassination. What a laugh.

Why did she still have twenty million? Jeremy asked himself again trying to remember. Oh. She brought that twenty million with her into the marriage. He had borrowed against it early on but had never spent it. How many times had he kicked himself for not spending it somewhere along the way? A man can be too frugal.

Never in a million years would he have guessed that she would sacrifice the kids to get his wealth. She said that he had raped his kids. The court had believed her and her manufactured evidence. Why wouldn't they believe their testimony when his children, ages thirteen and ten, believed? All of his allies had withdrawn from him. He had suddenly become an isolated and shunned man, not that it mattered because from the moment of his arrest he had never left incarceration.

His daughter said he fondled her when she sat on the stand in court. Annabella told the court that he made her suck his penis and then stuck it in her. She bawled as she described her rape at the hands of her father.

It was all a black fantasy; none of it was true. Jeremy was horrified and crushed as his little girl testified. She was living a manufactured trauma and Jeremy was watching her being violated by her mother's machinations. His little girl, his precious little angel believed her father was a monster.

His son's testimony was the same, only he was angry. His young hands were clenched in tight, white fists.

What kind of person concocts such a sick, malevolent fantasy and implants it in her own children? One who wears buttercup yellow dress suits, he thought, answering his own question.

Were his kids really that weak? Did he give birth to children without spines? They aren't that young that they couldn't fight back, Jeremy mused. They didn't fight. They didn't give a shit in the end. They're just like their mother — twisted, shallow, and greedy.

Annabella and Shea had better watch their backs because when the money runs low, their mother is going to cut them loose. Karma's a bitch.

Jeremy wanted to laugh at the pain in his heart, but there was no strength left. The betrayal was thorough and complete. His mind was reeling and he felt like his soul had already crumpled into dust.

The jury had found him guilty. No appeal. Maybe she had bought off the judge or corrupted the jury, but he was no longer in a position to run down that hypothesis.

They were going to wipe his mind.

Leandra was yelling again and flailing her arms at him. He watched one her bodyguards put his arm around her waist and pull her back. Jeremy smiled at her impotence. Necessity was going to force her to cut back on her lifestyle. She wouldn't be able to afford bodyguards for long.

So little money for you, he tried to sing. The majority of the world would be more than happy to have twenty million credits at their beck and call. Leandra wasn't a part of that overwhelming majority. He hadn't seen such greed in her when they had met in college or even when he had made his first millions. Her greed had exploded out of a darkness apparently buried deep within her that he hadn't seen before. But no matter. His billions were safe from her, even if they rotted in digital accounts in banks and brokerage houses until eternity. She had come so close and, yet, she was still so far.

She had won a pyrrhic victory.

Jeremy wondered what she was doing here? How did she get in? Punishment was immediate, or as immediate as possible given the prep time required. He had been sentenced yesterday and sent packing to the penitentiary hospital for wiping. So how had she come to be here? That was another mystery that he would never answer.

As his wheelchair was turned away from Leandra, Jeremy managed to squeeze out a slight chuckle. He hoped she would be afflicted with hemorrhoids and her hair fall out.