Chapter 11 - The Interrogation in the Cellar
The red strobe lights still washed the nursery walls in rhythmic, bloody pulses as Dante’s personal security detail dragged Arthur’s limp body out the double doors. Two armed guards remained stationed outside the nursery, their tactical carbines resting at low ready.
Dante lingered beside Sophia’s bed for another thirty seconds, watching her chest rise and fall under the heavy quilt. The little girl had finally succumbed to exhaustion, her fingers curled loosely around the corner of the faded waitress apron she had refused to let go of since the night I carried her into the diner. Dante adjusted the blanket over her shoulders, his lethal posture softening into something reverent, almost fragile.
"Elena is outside with Dr. Mercer," Dante said quietly, his deep voice scraping low in his chest as he turned to face me. "They will watch Sophia with their lives. But down in the sublevel, Arthur will be waking up. And Arthur is running out of air."
I pulled the torn fabric of my sleeve tight around my forearm, ignoring the dull ache where Arthur’s grip had bruised my skin. "Arthur didn't act alone, Dante. A man like that—an accountant who spent fifteen years hiding behind ledgers and legal trusts—doesn't orchestrate an armed breach of the most fortified brownstone in Manhattan unless he knows someone far more dangerous is backing his play."
Dante’s gray eyes narrowed, the cold predator surfacing beneath his skin once more. "Then we'll peel his skin back until we find who gave him the courage."
We took the private service elevator down three levels beneath the townhouse, descending beyond the wine vaults and the subterranean armory into the reinforced concrete cellar built during the Prohibition era. The room was freezing, smelling of damp limestone and industrial disinfectant. In the center, Arthur sat strapped to a heavy iron chair beneath a single exposed bulb, his split lip dripping dark crimson onto his tailored linen collar.
When the elevator doors parted, Arthur lifted his head. His eyes were swollen, but a sneering, desperate smile stretched across his battered face.
"You're too late, Dante," Arthur rasped, coughing as a fleck of blood hit the stone floor. "You think you won because your guards took out two expendable contract shooters? Clara has been moved. She isn't in the city anymore."
Dante didn't break stride. He closed the distance in three measured steps, grabbed Arthur by the throat with one gloved hand, and lifted the front legs of the iron chair off the ground.
"Where is she, Arthur?" Dante’s tone was terrifyingly calm, devoid of rage, carrying only the certainty of impending execution. "Give me an address, and I let you die quickly. Refuse me, and you'll beg for the bullet before dawn."
Arthur choked, clawing weakly at Dante’s wrist, but his eyes darted toward me, lingering on my face with malicious recognition.
May you like
"Ask her," Arthur wheezed, nodding toward me with a sickening laugh. "Ask your little runaway waitress. She knows the layout of the Blackwood Ironworks better than anyone alive. After all... her father built the foundation."
My heart slammed against my ribs. The name felt like an electric shock straight through my chest. Blackwood Ironworks. The shuttered industrial refinery along the Hudson River—the very property my father had forfeited twenty years ago before he disappeared into the night.
