Chapter 5 - The Interrogation
"Pick it up, Celeste," Gabriel said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he stepped over the body of a tactical operative.
He didn't have a scratch on him, save for a thin streak of red smeared across his forearm that wasn't necessarily his. He pulled a heavy leather chair out from the dining table, sat down directly in front of her, and rested his elbows on his knees, staring up at his former sister-in-law.
Celeste backed away until the back of her legs hit the edge of the dry bar.
"Gabriel... please," she whispered, her sophisticated Astoria veneer cracking instantly under the weight of sheer terror. "We’re family. I helped raise Lily—"
"You sold her out to the men who killed her mother," Gabriel interrupted, his voice dropping an octave. "You gave Moretti the security codes. You leaked the convoy route. And you stood there smiling while my four-year-old daughter starved herself into a hospital bed out of sheer terror."
"Moretti promised me protection!" she sobbed, sliding down the counter until she was huddled on the floor. "You were going to hand over the leadership to Dante! You were stepping down! I was going to be left with nothing!"
"You had a multi-million-dollar trust fund and a penthouse in Manhattan," Gabriel growled. "Greed isn't an ambition, Celeste. It's a disease."
He picked up the shattered tablet from the floor, tapping the cracked screen with a blood-stained thumb.
"Dante!" Gabriel called out toward the elevator shaft.
A moment later, Dante and two heavily armed guards emerged from the stairwell, stepping over the carnage in the foyer without missing a beat.
"Boss," Dante nodded.
"Take her to the basement facility on the North River dock," Gabriel instructed coldly. "Make sure she stays comfortable until our legal team—and our financial forensic accountants—extract every single password, key, and digital signature she transferred to Moretti."
"And Moretti?" Dante asked.
"Tell him his package is being returned," Gabriel said, standing up. "Piece by piece."
As Dante hauled a screaming, thrashing Celeste toward the private elevator, Gabriel turned slowly toward the hallway leading to the master suite.
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Through the monitor in the panic room, I watched him pause for a long moment, pressing his palm against the wall to steady himself. The terrifying syndicate boss vanished for a second, replaced by a man who had stared into the abyss of his own betrayal and barely made it out alive.
I pressed the sequence on the panic room wall, and the heavy steel door slid open.
