Chapter 8 - The Interrogation in the Concrete Vault
At 9:00 AM the following morning, the winter sun broke through the coastal clouds over Atlantic City in a brilliant sheet of gold.
Inside the subterranean holding cells beneath the casino counting room, the air was freezing, smelling of wet concrete and industrial disinfectant.
Veronica Rossi sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her sixty-thousand-dollar crimson velvet gown stained with black grease and dried cognac, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Marco walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Veronica saw Marco, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Marco! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father will pay whatever you want—he has fifty 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 Rossi,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The federal grand jury returned true bills across ninety-six counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated armed robbery, capital murder in the Trenton transport ambush, 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 laptop.
“Your trial begins in four weeks. You are facing consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.”
Veronica looked at Marco, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Marco... what are you going to do to me?”
Marco looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
“I am not going to do anything to you, Veronica,” Marco 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 stewardess you called an incompetent wench owns every casino your father 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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