Chapter 9 - The Final ThresholdTwo years after the courtroom gavel fell on Garrett’s sentence, a package arrived at corporate headquarters addressed directly to me.
It wasn't a legal brief. It wasn't a business proposal. It was a manila envelope bearing the official return address of the federal correctional facility in upstate New York.
For a moment, I stared at the envelope sitting on my pristine mahogany desk. My administrative assistant, Sarah, looked concerned, hovering near the doorway.
"Do you want me to have legal compliance open and screen this, Ms. Prescott?" she asked cautiously.
"No, Sarah," I replied steadily, reaching out with a letter opener. "I'll handle it."
Inside was a single sheet of cheap institutional lined paper, covered in familiar, cramped handwriting. It was a letter from Garrett.
“Brooke,I don't expect you to read this, and I certainly don't expect forgiveness. Time moves differently in here. Stripped of everything I thought defined me—the title, the money, the suits—I’ve had a lot of hours to look back at the man I was. I traded everything that mattered for an illusion of control and ambition that was hollow from the start. I hear rumors about how successful you’ve become, how you took Pacific Harbor Freight and turned it into an empire. You were always smarter, stronger, and sharper than I ever gave you credit for. I am deeply, profoundly sorry for the poison I brought into your life, and for what I tried to do to our children. You won, Brooke. You deserved to win.— Garrett.”
I read the letter through once, from top to bottom, without my pulse even accelerating by a single beat. There was no surge of anger, no sudden rush of vindication, and no lingering spark of grief.
There was only closure.
I walked over to the sleek cross-cut shredder standing beside my bookshelf, fed the letter into the slot, and watched with quiet satisfaction as the steel blades chewed the paper into tiny, unrecognizable confetti.
May you like
He was finally gone—not just from my life, but from my mind.
I walked back to my desk, picked up my phone, and called downstairs. "Sarah? Clear my schedule for the next two hours. I'm taking the afternoon off. I'm taking my kids to the beach."
