Chapter 6 - Cold Interrogation
The underground bunker beneath Luca’s downtown headquarters smelled of damp stone and ozone. Vanessa was sitting on a metal folding chair in the center of the interrogation room, shivering in her torn evening dress. The elegance she had displayed at the gala had completely disintegrated; her hair was disheveled, her mascara smeared down her cheeks.
The heavy steel door swung open, and Luca walked in alone.
He carried nothing except a single blue ledger and a small digital audio recorder. He dragged a second chair across the floor, the metal scraping against concrete with an ear-splitting shriek, and sat directly across from her.
"Luca, please! This is an outrage!" Vanessa sobbed, trying to put on an act of righteous indignation. "You've kept me locked up for six hours! My father is mobilizing his entire crew—"
Luca reached out and pressed 'play' on the audio recorder.
Elena’s voice filled the cold room. Calm, clinical, and devastatingly clear, recording her final medical observations and naming Vanessa’s father, Antonio Bellini, as the mastermind behind the tampered medication.
Vanessa’s voice died instantly. Her jaw dropped, her eyes darting between the recorder and Luca’s emotionless face.
"She kept receipts, Vanessa," Luca said, leaning back. "Elena was twice as smart as me, and ten times smarter than you. She knew what you were doing. She just ran out of time before she could bring it to me."
"Luca... that’s fabricated... she was delusional in her final days, the medication made her paranoid—"
"Do not speak her name with your filthy mouth," Luca warned, his voice a low growl that made her flinch. "I had my forensic accountants run the routing numbers from this ledger twenty minutes ago. The money trail leads straight from your offshore trust fund to the private doctor who signed Elena’s death certificate. That same doctor died of a suspicious drug overdose two weeks later."
Vanessa began to weep openly, realizing the game was over. "It wasn't my idea! It was my father! Antonio said you were too sentimental, that you let your family get in the way of business! He wanted the harbor routes, he wanted the shipping contracts—"
"And you wanted my empire," Luca interjected coldly. "You almost had it. But you got greedy. You couldn't wait until after the wedding to clean up loose ends. You had to go after Emily."
Vanessa’s tearful facade suddenly vanished, replaced by an ugly, venomous sneer. "Emily is weak! Just like her mother! She’s carrying a bastard child from an unknown father, and you were ready to hand her everything! Why her? Why not me? I stood by you for five years!"
"Because she has her mother's blood," Luca said softly, rising from his chair. "And you have the blood of traitors."
The door opened, and Marco stepped in, holding a satellite phone. "Boss. Urgent."
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Luca took the phone. "Speak."
"Boss, it’s the Maple Street perimeter," the voice crackled through the speaker, accompanied by the violent chatter of automatic gunfire. "Heavy assault! At least four vehicles! They hit us with flashbangs and breached the outer yard! Miss Emily is trapped inside!"
