Chapter 5 - The Interrogation in the Dark
Deep beneath the wine cellar, three floors below ground level, the air smelled of damp stone, aging oak barrels, and copper.
The holding cells weren't municipal cages with iron bars. They were soundproofed concrete vaults built during the Cold War as a fallout shelter for the estate’s original eccentric owner. Now, they served as Roman’s final court of arbitration for traitors who thought they could outsmart the syndicate.
Marcus Vance sat on a metal bench, his hands cuffed to a steel ring bolted directly into the center wall. His immaculate suit was rumpled, his tie loosened, but he still wore the arrogant, calculated smirk of a man who believed his institutional knowledge was too valuable to be discarded.
Julian Thorne paced the small concrete enclosure like a caged panther, his breath pluming slightly in the chilled air.
Heavy footsteps echoed down the stone corridor.
The pneumatic seal of the heavy steel door hissed open, and Roman stepped into the cell, flanked by two armed guards in tactical gear. He didn't speak. He simply pulled up a metal folding chair, sat down directly in front of Marcus, and crossed his legs.
“You’re making a catastrophic mistake, Roman,” Marcus said, his voice dripping with false calm. “If the board finds out you’ve locked us up without a formal tribunal, the entire syndicate structure in the tri-state area will fracture. Supply chains will halt. The docks will shut down within forty-eight hours.”
Roman leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He didn't blink.
“Let them shut down,” Roman said softly.
Julian stopped pacing, his eyes narrowing. “You’re willing to burn down a multi-billion-dollar enterprise over a traffic accident and the ramblings of a toddler?”
Roman slowly reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a small, encrypted flash drive, placing it gently on the edge of the metal table between them.
“This drive contains every offshore transaction, shell company routing code, and encrypted communication log originating from your terminal over the past fourteen months,” Roman said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. “It details how you’ve been quietly siphoning funds into Swiss accounts while setting up a rival distribution network through the northern shipping lanes.”
Marcus’s smirk vanished. The color drained from his face so completely his skin looked translucent under the harsh fluorescent bulb.
“That... that’s an unauthorized internal audit,” Marcus stammered, his polished corporate composure finally cracking. “You can’t legally—”
“Legally?” Roman interrupted, letting out a cold, humorless chuckle. “Marcus, you tried to blow my head off with a commercial freight truck at 1:39 this afternoon. You wrote a pre-fabricated murder report blaming a three-year-old child to cover your tracks. You talk to me about legality?”
Roman stood up slowly, towering over them in the cramped, concrete room.
“You thought I was getting soft,” Roman said, his voice dropping into a menacing whisper that echoed off the damp stone walls. “You thought because I let Clara and her little girl live in the east wing, because I stopped sleeping with a loaded Beretta under my pillow every night, that the Ghost of Blackridge had finally retired.”
Julian lunged forward, rattling his handcuffs against the wall in desperation. “Roman, listen to reason! We can cut a deal! We hand over the northern routes, we step down from the board, and—”
May you like
“There are no deals,” Roman said, turning toward the heavy steel door as it hissed open. He paused on the threshold, looking back over his shoulder one last time.
“By sunrise, your accounts will be frozen, your assets seized, and your names wiped from every corporate registry in the country. And when the federal marshals arrive tomorrow morning with arrest warrants for corporate espionage and conspiracy to commit murder, I’ll personally make sure you spend the rest of your natural lives in a federal supermax where nobody will ever hear you scream.”
