Chapter 8 - The Interrogation on the Launch SlipwayAt 9:00 AM the following morning, the winter sun broke through the coastal clouds over Boston in a brilliant sheet of gold.
Inside the subterranean holding vaults beneath Pier Four, the air was freezing, smelling of wet concrete, diesel exhaust, and the bitter salt spray of the harbor.
Victoria Sterling sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her sixty-thousand-dollar scarlet gown stained with black grease, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Matteo walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Victoria saw Matteo, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
"Matteo! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father had another cardiac episode 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 Massachusetts General Hospital, Miss Sterling," the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. "The grand jury returned true bills across eighty-six counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated maritime fraud, structural sabotage of commercial transport vessels, and the systematic theft of sovereign defense patents."
He showed her the decrypted internal memos recovered from the Pennsylvania foundries.
"For six months, you and your father actively concealed the micro-fractures in the steel plates of the Tempest, while personally ordering the yard security to destroy Maeve Vance's calculations to prevent the failure from being exposed."
Victoria looked at Matteo, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
"Matteo... what are you going to do to me?"
Matteo looked down at his former associate with cold, absolute detachment.
May you like
"I am not going to do anything to you, Victoria," Matteo 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 called an hourly peasant owns every foundry 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.
Related Stories
