Chapter 8 - The Interrogation of Celeste Whitmore
At 9:00 AM the following morning, the autumn sun broke through the clouds over Chicago in a brilliant sheet of sapphire and gold.
Inside the subterranean holding vaults beneath Pier 14, the air was freezing, smelling of wet concrete, diesel fuel, and the cold salt spray of the lake.
Celeste Whitmore sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her tailored designer gown wrinkled and stained with black grease, her bare feet blue with cold, her hands shivering violently inside steel transport cuffs.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Rafael walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Celeste saw Rafael, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Rafael! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father is in the hospital—he had another stroke this morning!”
Marcus Vance stepped forward, opening the primary federal indictment folder.
“Your father is currently under federal guard at Northwestern Memorial, Miss Whitmore,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The grand jury returned true bills across forty-eight counts thirty minutes ago. Arson resulting in death, corporate fraud, interstate money laundering, and the concealment of a capital felony.”
He showed her the decrypted banking ledgers retrieved from her father’s office safe.
“For twenty-nine years, the Whitmore Banking Syndicate collected four million dollars annually in trustee management fees on Chiara DeLuca’s estate while knowing she was alive and living in an unheated apartment three miles away.”
Celeste looked at Rafael, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Rafael... what are you going to do to me?”
Rafael looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
“I am not going to do anything to you, Celeste,” Rafael 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 thirty-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 maid you tried to silence owns every dollar your father ever stole.”
May you like
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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