Chapter 8 - The Interrogation in the Marble FoyerAt 10:00 AM the following morning, the autumn sun broke through the river fog over New Orleans in a brilliant sheet of sapphire and gold.
Inside the subterranean holding cells beneath the federal courthouse on Poydras Street, the air was cold, smelling of wet concrete and industrial disinfectant.
Camilla Dupont 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.
Julian walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance and two federal marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Camilla saw Julian, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Julian! 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 Ochsner Medical Center, Miss Dupont,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The grand jury returned true bills across ninety-four counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated maritime extortion, interstate racketeering, and the systematic embezzlement of port authority funds.”
He showed her the decrypted banking ledgers retrieved from the Delaware accounts.
“For eighteen months, you and Thomas Bennett actively plotted the fraudulent seizure of the Cross shipping terminals while laundering twenty million dollars through forged Savannah marriage trusts.”
Camilla looked at Julian, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Julian... what are you going to do to me?”
Julian looked down at his former fiancée with cold, absolute detachment.
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“I am not going to do anything to you, Camilla,” Julian 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 an hourly maid owns every warehouse your family 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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