Chapter 3 - The Cold Steel Interrogation
The armor plating on the Maybach absorbed the gunfire like hail on a tin roof.
Dull thuds slammed into the tinted windows as we rocketed down the service
alley.
Tires screeched on slick cobblestones.
Dominic sat beside me in the rear seat, perfectly still.
He tapped a sequence into an internal communication screen mounted on the
console.
“Route B,” he ordered the driver. “Burn the secondary safehouse. Julian knows
the grid.”
“Understood, Boss,” the driver muttered.
I pulled the listening device from beneath my collarbone.
The adhesive took skin with it.
I didn't flinch.
I crushed the plastic transmitter beneath the heel of my server shoe.
Dominic watched every movement.
“Federal?” he asked.
“Independent,” I replied.
He scoffed.
“Nobody stays independent in this city. You either carry a badge or you kiss a
ring.”
“My father kissed rings,” I said, meeting his dark gaze.
“It got him six feet of dirt and an unmarked grave.”
The Maybach wove violently through traffic on the West Side Highway.
The rain turned the Hudson River into a churning slate of black water.
Dominic leaned back into the leather upholstery.
“Julian Vance doesn't move thirty-nine million through my own accounts without
inside help.”
“Isabella was his inside help,” I pointed out.
“Isabella is greedy,” Dominic said dismissively. “She’s not capable of setting
up an offshore sweep.”
He turned his full attention toward me.
“Who else helped her?”
“I don't give away intelligence for free,” I answered.
Dominic leaned forward slowly.
The air inside the vehicle grew claustrophobic.
“You’re sitting in my car, Elena. Running from my enemies.”
“I saved your fortune twenty minutes ago, Dominic.”
“You saved thirty-nine million that belongs to my family.”
“And I could have let it clear into the Cayman accounts and vanished into the
crowd.”
He studied my face.
Searching for a tremor.
Searching for weakness.
He found nothing.
I had spent three years training in Geneva, Tel Aviv, and London for this exact
moment.
I didn't fear death.
I feared failing my father’s memory.
The Maybach took a sharp dive down an industrial ramp into an underground
warehouse beneath DUMBO.
Steel blast doors slammed shut behind us with a pneumatic hiss.
The engine died.
Silence fell over the car.
The driver opened the doors.
We stepped out onto polished concrete lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs.
Vincent was already there.
His hands were scrubbed clean, but a dark stain marked the cuff of his dress
shirt.
“The girl is downstairs,” Vincent said to Dominic.
Dominic nodded once.
“Did she talk?”
“Not yet,” Vincent grunted. “She keeps demanding her lawyer.”
Dominic walked toward a reinforced steel door at the back of the facility.
He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me.
“Walk with me, Elena.”
It wasn't an invitation.
We descended a damp flight of concrete stairs into an old vault.
Isabella was tied to a steel folding chair under a single bare bulb.
Her red dress was torn at the shoulder.
Her makeup was completely smeared, giving her the appearance of a cracked
porcelain doll.
When the heavy door opened, she lifted her head.
“Dominic!” she cried out. “Dominic, please! It was Julian! He threatened me!”
Dominic didn't say a word.
He pulled a second chair out and sat down three feet in front of her.
He rested his elbows on his knees.
“You brought hitters into my restaurant, Isabella.”
“I didn't! Those were Julian’s men! He said he would kill me if the money didn't
clear!”
“Lie,” I interjected from the doorway.
Isabella glared at me with pure hatred.
“Shut your mouth, you little gutter rat!”
I walked into the circle of light.
“The text messages on the encrypted phone were initiated from your handset,
Isabella.”
I pulled up the logs I had mirrored to my personal cloud drive.
“You weren't being extorted. You negotiated a forty percent cut.”
Isabella shrank back into the metal chair.
“You promised Julian the logistics codes to the Red Hook terminal,” I continued.
Dominic’s jaw ticked again.
The Red Hook terminal was the Salvatore family’s primary artery.
Everything moved through those shipping containers.
If Julian Vance took Red Hook, the Salvatores were finished in New York.
Dominic stood up.
He didn't raise his voice.
He didn't raise a fist.
He just looked at Isabella with an emptiness that was more terrifying than rage.
“You traded my family’s life’s work for forty pieces of silver.”
“Dominic, wait—”
“Give her the documents, Vincent.”
Vincent tossed a thick manila folder into Isabella’s lap.
“Sign the forfeiture agreements,” Dominic commanded.
“Every property. Every trust. Every piece of jewelry you ever touched.”
“And if I don't?” she whispered, trembling.
“Then Vincent opens the floor drain,” Dominic said without an ounce of emotion.
She looked at Vincent’s scarred, deadpan face.
She grabbed the pen with shaking fingers.
She signed every single page in frantic, desperate scrawls.
When the last page was turned, Dominic picked up the folder.
He handed it to Vincent.
“Put her on a cargo freighter to South America. No passport. No phone. No
money.”
“Dominic, no! Please!” Isabella sobbed.
“If you ever step foot on North American soil again,” Dominic whispered, “I
won't send Vincent. I’ll come myself.”
Vincent untied the chair and dragged her toward the secondary corridor.
Her screams faded behind soundproof steel doors.
The vault was quiet again.
Dominic turned to me.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Let’s talk about Red Hook.”
“Julian Vance doesn't have the codes,” I told him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I altered the firewall two days ago while I was wiping down your office
desk.”
Dominic took a slow step toward me.
His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
“You broke into my private office?”
“Your security system is fifteen years old, Dominic. It took me four minutes.”
He was suddenly standing right in front of me.
I could smell the smoke, the expensive cologne, and the faint metallic scent of
gunpowder on his skin.
“You played me,” he murmured.
“I protected my mark,” I corrected him. “If Julian destroyed you before I got to
him, my father’s real killer would never answer for his crimes.”
Dominic reached out.
His hand rose slowly.
I didn't flinch.
His fingertips grazed the edge of my jaw, right where the skin was scratched
from the flying glass.
“You have ice in your veins, Elena Valli.”
“Ice doesn't shatter,” I replied.
A heavy phone inside Dominic’s coat pocket buzzed.
He pulled it out, broke eye contact, and answered.
“Speak.”
He listened for three seconds.
His entire posture changed.
The relaxed predator became an active war machine.
“When?” Dominic barked into the receiver.
He paused, then hung up without saying goodbye.
“What happened?” I asked.
Dominic looked at me, his eyes dark with an approaching storm.
“Julian Vance just launched an armed assault on Pier 42.”
“My father’s old warehouse,” I whispered, cold dread pooling in my stomach.
May you like
“No,” Dominic said grimly, racking the slide of his Kimber .45.
“The place where Julian Vance keeps the only ledger that can bury us both.”
