Chapter 2 - The Red Camellia of PontchartrainThe golden Department of Justice badge sat on the white damask runner like a flat piece of lead.
Special Attorney Arthur Vance’s triumphant smirk did not waver immediately. He had spent three decades prosecutorial royalty in the Eastern District, dining with governors and burying dock bosses under stacks of federal indictments. He leaned back in his carved chair, his silver hair catching the amber light of the candelabras, and chuckled.
“A clever misdirection, Christian,” Arthur Vance said, his voice measured, smooth, and laced with absolute contempt. “A predictable defense. But audio engineering doesn’t stand alone. We have three signed transport affidavits and a maritime fuel manifest bearing your family’s registered digital encryption keys.”
“My digital encryption keys,” Christian murmured.
He struck a match against the silver casing of his lighter, touched the flame to his cigarette, and let a clean stream of smoke rise toward the painted fresco on the ceiling.
He didn't look at Arthur.
He turned his amber eyes slowly, methodically toward Bianca Moretti.
Bianca’s knuckles were white against her crystal goblet. The triumphant snarl on her painted lips had frozen, stiffening into an unnatural mask as the silence in the room deepened until the hum of the central air sounded like an approaching locomotive.
“Tell him about the keys, Bianca,” Christian whispered.
Bianca swallowed. Her throat clicked audibly. “Christian, darling, you are being ridiculous. Arthur is here doing his duty as a public servant. If there has been an administrative error regarding the harbor barge—”
“The barge was named The Red Camellia,” Christian said, cutting through her words without raising his volume by a decibel. “Registered in Monrovia under a holding company called Pelagic Transit LLC. Seven hundred tons of ammonium nitrate and obsolete military ordnance, cleared through the Port of New Orleans on a falsified agricultural permit.”
He took one step toward her chair, his polished shoes grinding the shards of the shattered champagne bottle into fine green powder against the Carrara marble.
“Pelagic Transit is owned by your father, Don Salvatore Moretti,” Christian continued. “And the digital encryption token used to authorize its passage wasn't stolen from my terminal. It was cloned from the private master laptop kept in my bedroom study—a room accessible by exactly one person in this house while I was in Baton Rouge.”
Arthur Vance frowned, his gaze flicking toward Bianca. A microscopic line of doubt formed between his silver brows.
“Special Prosecutor,” Christian said, his gaze never leaving his fiancée’s whitening face. “Marcus, bring up the feeds on the wall display.”
Marcus tapped his tablet.
The high-definition projection screen concealed behind the tapestry above the marble fireplace slid down with a muted whir.
The screen flared to life, divided into three quad-screens:
The first showed the subterranean wine cellar at 3:42 PM.
The sound engineer sat with his headphones, his face captured in crystal-clear four-kilowatt resolution by a pinhole lens hidden within the eye of a carved stone gargoyle on the ceiling arch. Sitting directly across from him, holding a golden USB stick stamped with Christian’s family crest, was Bianca Moretti.
The audio played through the dining room's surround-sound speakers, stripped of static:
“Make sure the inflection sounds arrogant,” Bianca’s voice rang out through the grand hall, clear, cruel, and unmistakable. “Christian never pleads. He states it as a fact. The federal grand jury needs to believe he blew up those four inspectors because they refused his shakedown.”
The twenty-eight seated guests—judges, parish commissioners, and maritime magnates—pulled back from the table as if the linen had caught fire.
The second quad-screen showed the exterior alleyway behind the French Quarter compound.
Six black tactical SUVs from the Louisiana State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were already idling at the curb, their red and blue strobe lights painting the brick walls in violent rhythm. Two state troopers were holding the audio engineer face-down against the wet pavement, his tactical windbreaker torn open, his laptops being sealed into silver evidence bags.
And the third screen displayed the live tracking of an offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands:
A transfer of two million four hundred thousand dollars, initiated forty minutes ago from a shell account registered to Special Attorney Arthur Vance, funded entirely by dividends from Moretti Shipping Lines.
The dining room went completely airless.
Arthur Vance’s patronizing composure evaporated. The color drained from his weathered face, leaving him the gray shade of river silt. His hand twitched toward his badge on the table, but he froze when he looked up.
May you like
Christian was standing two inches from him.
“You took two million dollars from Salvatore Moretti to run an artificial tape through an emergency grand jury, Arthur,” Christian said softly, his voice dropping into a register of primeval, unhurried death. “You thought you were staging an arrest. In reality, you just walked into an execution chamber with a government badge pinned to your chest.”
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