Chapter 8 - The Interrogation in the Coral Cellar
At 9:00 AM the following morning, the winter sun broke through the coastal clouds over Miami in a brilliant sheet of gold.
Inside the subterranean holding cells beneath the marina vault, the air was freezing, smelling of wet concrete and industrial disinfectant.
Sienna De Luca sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her sixty-thousand-dollar cloth-of-gold gown stained with black grease and dried Bordeaux, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Christian walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Sienna saw Christian, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Christian! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father will pay whatever you want—he has sixty million in Zurich!”
Marcus Vance stepped forward, opening the primary federal indictment folder.
“Your father signed over every terminal, every vessel, and every dollar in Zurich three hours ago, Miss De Luca,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The federal grand jury returned true bills across ninety-eight counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated high treason, illegal arms trafficking of military ordnance, and the systematic framing of an innocent citizen.”
He showed her the decrypted audio files and the digital voice-synthesis logs recovered from the technician’s workstation.
“Your trial begins in four weeks. You are facing consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.”
Sienna looked at Christian, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Christian... what are you going to do to me?”
Christian looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
“I am not going to do anything to you, Sienna,” Christian 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 pantry maid you tried to silence owns every shipping terminal your family ever built.”
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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