Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Syndicate
The basement of the Blackwood estate was not a dungeon, but it was far colder than any grave.
Constructed beneath the wine cellars behind three layers of reinforced soundproofing, the interrogation room was illuminated by a single, buzzing halogen tube. Serena Montigue sat shivering on a cold metal chair, her bare feet swollen and purple, her silk blouse stained with grime and tears.
The heavy steel door swung open without a sound.
Victor stepped inside, flanked by Dominic. Victor was freshly shaved, his dark hair slicked back, wearing a bespoke midnight-blue suit that screamed wealth and untouchable authority. In his hand, he carried a slim leather folder.
Serena scrambled to her feet, rattling the heavy handcuffs that chained her right wrist to the bolted steel table.
“Victor! Victor, please!” she sobbed, her aristocratic poise completely obliterated. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks like soot. “You’ve kept me down here for fourteen hours! My father is mobilizing his security! If I don't check in, the whole city will know you kidnapped me!”
Victor pulled out the opposite chair, turned it around, and sat down, resting his forearms against the backrest.
“Your father has not mobilized security, Serena,” Victor said, his tone chillingly conversational. “Your father spent the last five hours on his knees in my downtown boardroom, begging me not to execute his sons.”
Serena froze, her breath hitching in her throat. “What?”
Dominic tossed a tablet onto the table between them. The screen illuminated, displaying high-resolution surveillance photos taken less than three hours ago.
They showed Julian Montigue, the proud patriarch of Chicago’s shipping trade, surrounded by Victor’s heavily armed soldiers in his own penthouse, signing stacks of commercial transfer deeds with trembling hands.
“Your father has ceded sixty percent of the Calumet Harbor berths to the Blackwood family,” Victor explained, his voice flat. “He paid twenty-five million dollars into Ethan’s trust fund as restitution for medical damages. And he formally renounced your engagement.”
“He... he abandoned me?” Serena whispered, her eyes wide with uncomprehending horror. “He’s my father!”
“He is a businessman,” Victor countered coldly. “And he knows that one more word from you will turn the Montigue family into a historical footnote. But your father’s cowardice does not interest me, Serena. This does.”
Victor opened the leather folder and slid a medical report across the steel table.
Serena looked down at the paper. The header bore the logo of an elite toxicological laboratory in Zurich.
“Ethan’s blood work came back two hours ago,” Victor said, the quiet rage in his voice vibrating through the concrete room. “Evans found traces of low-grade sedative compounds in his system. Compounds that mimic colic and chronic irritability. Compounds that have been systematically introduced to his formula over the last six weeks.”
Serena’s jaw trembled. She couldn't speak.
“You weren't just abusing him in fits of temper,” Victor said, leaning forward until his face was inches from hers across the table. His slate eyes were absolute voids. “You were deliberately drugging my son so that he would cry endlessly. So that he would appear sickly, unmanageable, and broken. You wanted me to believe that raising him was a burden. You wanted to convince me to send him to a boarding school in Switzerland before he could even form full sentences.”
“Victor, no—it wasn't like that!” Serena shrieked, backing away as far as the handcuffs would permit. “He was always in the way! You never looked at me! You only ever cared about that dead woman’s bastard! Every time you held him, you saw Helena! I was supposed to be your queen!”
“Helena gave me a son,” Victor said, his voice dropping to a subterranean growl. “You gave me treachery.”
He stood up, smoothing his lapels with absolute calm.
“Victor, wait! What are you going to do to me? You can’t kill me—the Commission will investigate!”
“The Commission has already reviewed the evidence,” Victor said without looking back. “They agreed that a woman who poisons an heir to an executive seat has forfeited her rights under syndicate law. However, I am not going to kill you, Serena.”
Serena gasped, a flicker of pathetic hope igniting in her eyes. “You’re... you’re letting me go?”
Victor paused at the door. He turned slightly, the fluorescent light catching the brutal angles of his face.
“Death is too quick. It leaves no time for reflection,” Victor said. “There is a convent off the coast of Sicily. High in the mountains. Surrounded by armed sentries loyal only to my bloodline. You will spend the remainder of your days in silent contemplation, scrubbed of your name, your money, and your fine clothes. You will wash stone floors until your knees bleed. And every time you hear the cry of an infant from the valley below, you will remember what you threw away.”
“No! Victor, please! Kill me! Just shoot me!” Serena screamed, lunging against the chains until the metal bit deep into her wrist, drawing blood.
Victor did not flinch.
“Dominic. Prep the private transport. Strip her down to standard transport garb. If she speaks during transit, cut her tongue out.”
“Understood, Boss.”
Victor stepped out of the cell, the heavy steel door slamming shut behind him, cutting Serena’s frantic, desperate wails off mid-scream.
In the hallway, Victor took a deep, steadying breath. He adjusted his cufflinks.
May you like
He didn't care about the harbor berths. He didn't care about the twenty-five million dollars. His mind was upstairs, in the sunlit suite where a dark-haired girl with bruised ribs was currently holding his world together.
***
