Chapter 12 - The Prisoner of State Street
The federal holding facility on State Street smelled of industrial floor wax, bleached linen, and cold, institutional despair. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed with a monotonous, nerve-wracking frequency that seemed to vibrate directly inside my skull.
I sat in the small, partitioned visitor's booth, separated from the other side of the reinforced glass by a heavy metal mesh. Behind me, standing like a silent, unmovable monolith in the corner of the cinderblock room, was Marco. He had argued fiercely against me coming down here alone, but Luca had ultimately agreed with my logic—if Vivienne was dangling information about Vincent’s hidden assets or remaining loyalists, we needed to know before they could mobilize against us.
A heavy steel door on the opposite side of the glass clicked open. Two guards escorted Vivienne Vale into the room.
The transformation was staggering. The woman who had stood beneath the glittering chandeliers of the Moretti ballroom wearing an ivory designer gown and flashing a multi-carat diamond ring was entirely gone. In her place was a pale, hollow-eyed prisoner wearing an oversized orange jumpsuit, her blonde hair pulled back into a messy, unwashed knot. The arrogance that had defined her every movement was replaced by a desperate, twitchy paranoia.
Vivienne sat down heavily on the metal stool, picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with shaking hands, and stared at me through the glass. I picked up my own receiver, pressing it firmly against my ear.
“I knew you would come,” Vivienne whispered, her voice raspy and cracked. There was no venom in her tone now—only a pathetic, pleading edge. “Luca wouldn't answer my calls. His lawyers sent my legal team packing within ten minutes. But you... you have a soft spot for lost causes, don't you, Elena?”
“I have a soft spot for the truth, Vivienne,” I replied calmly, keeping my voice level. “Marco said you have information about Vincent’s remaining network. Let’s hear it. No games.”
Vivienne gave a bitter, humorless laugh that ended in a dry cough. “Games? Do you think I’m playing games? Vincent used me, Elena. He promised me that once Luca was neutralized by the commission and the old guard took over, I would be standing right beside him as queen of this syndicate. He told me Rosa was just going to be quietly sidelined in a nursing home. He never told me he was going to have her suffocated during the dinner toast!”
I gripped the edges of the plastic phone tighter. “You were the one who locked her emergency medication in your handbag, Vivienne. You were an active participant in her murder attempt.”
“Because I was terrified of him!” she hissed, pressing her pale face closer to the glass, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “Vincent held my family’s debts in the palm of his hand. He threatened to ruin my parents, to strip everything we owned down to the bare dirt, if I didn't play my part. I was just a pawn!”
“Pawns don't smile while an eighty-five-year-old woman is fighting for her breath,” I said coldly, refusing to let her play the victim. “If you want to save yourself from spending the next thirty years in a maximum-security prison, you’re going to give us something real. Where are Vincent’s off-shore accounts hidden?”
Vivienne looked over her shoulder nervously, as if expecting one of Vincent’s enforcers to step out of the shadows of the federal holding room—even though Vincent was locked deep in the Moretti holding docks awaiting final sentencing. She leaned back toward the glass, her hands trembling violently.
“Not offshore,” she whispered, her voice dropping to a panicked murmur. “In Chicago. A safety deposit box at the First National Bank downtown. But it’s not under Vincent’s name. And it’s not under mine.”
“Whose name is it under?” I demanded.
“Miriam,” Vivienne said, her eyes wide with terror. “The woman Vincent’s father murdered back in 1994. Vincent kept her old birth certificate and passport in that box, along with the original deeds to the St. Jude’s clinic property. If you take those documents to the federal prosecutor, Vincent’s entire defense falls apart forever—he won't just be stripped of his syndicate title; he’ll face federal rackotriering and murder charges that even the best corrupt judges in Illinois can't touch.”
I stared at her across the barrier, my mind racing. The name Miriam had appeared in Rosa’s journal—the tragic center of the decades-old cover-up. If that safety deposit box existed, it was the final nail in the coffin for the entire corrupt regime.
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“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “What do you want in return?”
“Protection,” Vivienne whispered, tears finally spilling over her lower eyelids and tracking through the dust on her cheeks. “Put me in protective custody away from Vincent’s remaining loyalists. If they think I traded their secrets to you, I won't survive the week inside general population.”
