Chapter 7 - The Interrogation in the Cellar
The air in the sub-basement storage cellar beneath the estate’s wine vault smelled of damp limestone, eighty-year-old French oak casks, and the coppery, metallic reek of fresh arterial blood.
A single, bare incandescent bulb hung from a frayed yellow cord in the center of the vaulted stone ceiling, swinging gently in the draft, casting harsh, oscillating shadows across the damp flagstones.
Sitting in the center of the light, strapped to a heavy iron chair bolted into the concrete, was Beatrice Vance.
At sixty, the woman looked like a portrait of patrician domestic service: gray hair styled in a tidy, respectable roll, wearing a crisp, unwrinkled nurse’s smock of starch-stiffened white linen. Her spectacles sat crooked on her nose, one lens cracked where Rocco’s knuckles had greeted her in the nursery twenty minutes ago. Her lip was split, a thin line of scarlet trickling down her chin onto her white collar, but her pale blue eyes held the cold, unrepentant arrogance of someone who believed she had executed a holy duty.
Standing five feet away in the shadows was Dominic Moretti.
He had not put his jacket back on. He had rolled his sleeves higher, past the tattoos of the archangel on his forearms, his hands resting in the pockets of his dark trousers. Beside him stood Sophie, wearing a heavy, dark charcoal cashmere overcoat that Dominic had taken from his own closet and draped over her shoulders to shield her from the cellar draft.
Beatrice slowly lifted her head. Her eyes bypassed Dominic and locked directly onto Sophie.
A bitter, venomous sneer curled the older woman’s split lips.
"You," Beatrice spat, her voice hoarse, scraping past vocal cords that had spent twenty minutes screaming into a gag. "You little ingrate. I paid thirty thousand dollars to the bursar’s office at Northwestern so you could wear a clean uniform. I bought your mother’s cemetery plot in Oakridge. And you bring the viper back to my door."
Sophie did not flinch. She stood with her hands buried in the deep pockets of Dominic’s coat, her chin lifted, her hazel eyes burning with a deep, sorrowful disgust.
"You put cyanide in a two-week-old baby’s bottle, Aunt Beatrice," Sophie said softly. "You watched her choke on her own tongue."
"She is not a baby!" Beatrice shrieked, her voice echoing off the stone barrels like a manic bell. "She is a Moretti! She is the seed of the animal that murdered my brother!"
Dominic took one slow, measured stride forward into the yellow cone of light.
The temperature in the cellar seemed to collapse into a frozen vacuum.
"Your brother was an enforcer for the Castiglione family, Beatrice," Dominic said, his baritone so low, so rhythmic, that it sounded like an ancient verdict being read from iron tablets. "He walked into my father's warehouse in ninety-eight with two gallons of gasoline and a lighter. He burned twelve dockworkers alive. My father put him in the river."
"He was my brother!" Beatrice wept, tears cutting through the blood on her cheeks. "And you... you brought me into this house! You made me nurse your sick wife! You made me wash her feet! And then you put that monster's grandchild into my arms and expected me to sing her lullabies!"
She looked up at Dominic, her bloodshot eyes glittering with madness.
"The Castiglione family gave me five hundred thousand dollars in an offshore trust in Vaduz," she hissed, laughing through her teeth. "They have three crews waiting at the state line in Gary. By morning, they were supposed to move on the south terminals while you were weeping over an empty crib. You were supposed to be broken, Dominic! You were supposed to die like your father!"
Dominic looked down at her.
He did not raise his hand. He did not draw the Sig Sauer from his belt.
In the world of Dominic Moretti, when an enemy confessed to poisoning an infant, physical violence was an insult to the gravity of the crime.
Dominic turned his head toward the shadow of the doorway.
"Matteo," Dominic said.
The enforcer stepped into the light, holding a heavy, steel-jawed industrial bolt-cutter and a five-gallon plastic container of muriatic acid.
"Take her to the rail spur in Cicero," Dominic commanded, his voice cold as winter granite. "Strip her of the uniform. When the Castiglione scouts arrive at zero-four-hundred to inspect the line... ensure she is hanging from the water tower by her ankles."
Beatrice’s laughter died instantly. Her face turned the color of spoiled curd, her mouth opening in a silent, paralyzed shriek of pure, animal terror as Matteo stepped behind the iron chair.
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Dominic did not look back.
He reached out his right hand, his large fingers gently taking hold of Sophie’s elbow, guiding her smoothly out of the cellar toward the stone stairs leading back into the light.
