Chapter 8 - The Interrogation of Camilla LaurentAt 9:00 AM the following morning, the autumn sun broke through the river mist in a brilliant sheet of sapphire and gold.
Inside the subterranean holding vaults beneath Pier 8, the air was freezing, smelling of wet concrete, diesel fuel, and the cold salt spray of the harbor.
Camilla Laurent sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her tailored designer gown wrinkled and stained with black grease, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
I walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Camilla saw me, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Julian! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My mother had a cardiac episode in federal custody this morning—she can't survive in a prison cell!”
Marcus Vance stepped forward, opening the primary federal indictment folder.
“Your mother 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 sixty-four counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated grave robbery, corporate extortion, interstate racketeering, and the attempted framing of Teresa Vance.”
He showed her the decrypted banking ledgers retrieved from the Geneva files.
“For eight years, the Laurent family systematically sabotaged the Hudson shipping lines while laundering eighty million dollars through stolen maritime trusts.”
Camilla looked at me, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Julian... what are you going to do to me?”
I looked down at my former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
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“I am not going to do anything to you, Camilla,” I whispered, my 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. You will eat prison bread. You will scrub prison floors. And every morning when you wake up, you will remember that the woman you tried to frame owns every terminal your father ever built.”
I turned on my 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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