Chapter 4 - The Midnight Interrogation
At 1:30 A.M., in a soundproof basement facility beneath a commercial auto body shop in Newark, Vance sat tied to a metal chair under the glaring light of a single overhead bulb.
His expensive suit was ruined, sweat dripping from his chin onto his silk tie. His lip was split, and his hands were trembling uncontrollably.
Dominic Russo stood in the shadows, leaning against a concrete pillar, tossing a brass lighter from hand to hand.
The heavy steel door of the basement opened.
Adrian walked in. He had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves up to his forearms. He carried no weapons, no instruments of pain. He carried only a black leather folder, which he tossed onto the metal table in front of Vance with a dull THUD.
Vance flinched violently. “Mr. Bellucci! Please! I was just following orders! Marcus told me it was an internal audit authorized by the board!”
Adrian pulled up a metal chair, turned it backward, and sat down three feet from the terrified technician.
“Vance,” Adrian said, his voice as calm as a summer lake. “You are a very talented software engineer. You graduated top of your class at MIT. You have a wife, two daughters, and a very nice house in Princeton that you bought with money Marcus wired to an account in Switzerland.”
Vance swallowed hard, a sob catching in his throat. “Mr. Bellucci... Marcus has photos of my family... he threatened—”
“I don't care about Marcus’s threats, Vance,” Adrian interrupted smoothly. “I care about my wedding. I care about the fact that a five-year-old girl had to cry in front of two hundred people because you forged an encrypted transmission on my wife’s tablet.”
“It wasn't her tablet!” Vance blurted out, tears streaming down his face. “It was a secondary clone device! Marcus had her iPad cloned when she brought it to the estate’s IT station two months ago to set up the guest Wi-Fi! Every message, every transfer... it was executed from my terminal in the basement!”
Adrian leaned forward, resting his elbows on the back of the chair. “And the two hundred fifty thousand dollars?”
“Transferred to an account Marcus opened using a stolen copy of her maiden-name identity documents three weeks ago,” Vance confessed frantically. “He was setting up a paper trail to show she was liquidating assets to flee the country after stealing the primary ledger on your wedding night!”
Dominic stepped out of the shadows, opening the leather folder on the table. Inside were printed logs of every line of code Vance had executed over the past ninety days.
“He has it all, Vance,” Dominic said coldly. “Your digital signatures are on every single file.”
Vance looked at Adrian with pure, naked desperation. “If I testify to the commission tomorrow... if I give you the master decryption keys to Marcus’s private server... will you let me live? Will you protect my family?”
Adrian stood up slowly. He looked down at the sweating, terrified man who had almost ruined his life.
“Your family is already being moved to a safehouse in Maine under Dominic’s personal protection,” Adrian said. “As for you... you are going to sit in this room until eight A.M. tomorrow. Then you are going to wear a nice suit, walk into my library, and explain to my captains how Marcus Vale tried to murder a dead man’s memory to steal an empire.”
Vance nodded frantically. “Yes! Yes! Anything! I’ll tell them everything!”
Adrian turned and walked toward the exit door. Before stepping through, he paused and looked back at Dominic.
“Ensure Mr. Vance gets a clean shirt,” Adrian said mildly. “I want him to look professional for the commission.”
“Right away, Boss,” Dominic grinned.
Adrian walked back out into the cool night air. The rain had stopped, leaving the asphalt roads of Newark slick and dark under the amber streetlights.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the private line to the master suite in Oyster Bay.
The line rang twice before Claire’s soft, anxious voice came through the speaker.
“Adrian?”
“It’s over, Claire,” Adrian said softly, his voice softening into the gentle tone he reserved only for her. “Vance broke. We have the master keys. We have the original structural reports. Marcus is completely exposed.”
On the other end of the line, Claire let out a long, trembling breath that sounded like five years of fear evaporating into the night sky.
May you like
“Are you coming home?” she asked softly.
“I’m coming home,” Adrian replied. “Rest, my love. Tomorrow at ten A.M., the rose garden belongs to us again.”
