Chapter 8 - The Interrogation in the Granite CellarAt 10:00 AM the following morning, the winter sun broke through the coastal clouds over Boston in a brilliant sheet of sapphire and gold.
Inside the subterranean holding cells beneath the federal courthouse on Fan Pier, the air was cold, smelling of wet concrete and industrial disinfectant.
Vivian Sterling sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her tailored designer clothes stained with soot from the courtyard fire, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the concrete floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Dominic walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Vivian saw Dominic, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Dominic! 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 ninety-six counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated vehicular homicide, maritime racketeering, and the systematic embezzlement of port authority funds.”
He showed her the decrypted banking ledgers retrieved from the Canadian accounts.
“For eighteen months, you and Silvio Morelli actively plotted the murder of Leo Morelli while laundering thirty million dollars through forged Pennsylvania steel trusts.”
Vivian looked at Dominic, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Dominic... what are you going to do to me?”
Dominic looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
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“I am not going to do anything to you, Vivian,” Dominic 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 seamstress you called a stray dog 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.
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