Chapter 8 - The Interrogation of Camilla LaurentAt 2:00 PM the following afternoon, the holding cells beneath the federal courthouse in Chicago were freezing, smelling of damp concrete and disinfectant.
Camilla Laurent sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her sixty-thousand-dollar Valentino gown stained with grease, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Dante walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Camilla saw Dante, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Dante! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father had a heart attack in federal custody this morning—he can't survive in a prison cell!”
Marcus Vance stepped forward, opening the primary federal indictment folder.
“Your father is currently under armed federal guard at Northwestern Memorial, Miss Laurent,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The grand jury returned true bills across ninety-six counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated arson resulting in death, corporate fraud, and the systematic suppression of fatal industrial accidents.”
He showed her the decrypted internal memos recovered from the Wacker Drive offices.
“For six months, you and your father actively concealed the safety violations that killed Thomas Lin, while personally ordering the catering agency to assign Maya Lin to the most grueling physical shifts in the city to force her off the property.”
Camilla looked at Dante, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Dante... what are you going to do to me?”
Dante looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
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“I am not going to do anything to you, Camilla,” Dante whispered, his voice quiet enough that the water dripping in the drain sounded like a metronome. “The law will do it for me. You will spend twenty-five years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. You will eat prison bread. You will scrub prison floors. And every morning when you wake up, you will remember that the woman you struck down owns every pharmaceutical warehouse your father ever built.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the holding block, leaving her frantic, weeping cries to echo against the damp concrete until the heavy iron door slammed shut forever.
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