Chapter 2: The Interrogation Room in Silk
1355 Words
Chapter 2: The Interrogation Room in Silk
The reception was a blur of lethal glimmers—champagne glasses clinking against heavy signet rings, silencers shifting beneath tailored velvet tuxedos, and predatory smiles from men who controlled half the shipping ports on the Eastern Seaboard.
Through it all, Dante Moretti never let go of my wrist.
His hand was a steel shackle wrapped in warm leather. He steered me through the crowd of syndicate bosses like a trophy he had captured rather than a bride he had courted. Every time I tried to pull back just enough to slip my hand into my handbag—where my primary encrypted drive sat disguised as a compact powder mirror—his fingers tightened just enough to cut off my circulation.
By 1:00 AM, the Maybach was gliding down the dark, winding coastal highway toward the Moretti cliffside estate.
The interior of the limousine was suffocatingly quiet. Dante sat across from me in the plush leather seat, his bow tie undone, his crisp white collar unbuttoned at the throat to reveal the edge of a black tattoo creeping up his neck. He hadn't said a word since we left the cathedral. He simply poured three fingers of rare Japanese whiskey, leaned back, and watched me through the dark.
I kept my spine straight, the lace of Chloe’s wedding dress pooling around my knees like foam on a dark sea. I forced my breathing into a slow, rhythmic pattern, counting the seconds between each inhalation.
Four seconds in. Four seconds hold. Four seconds out.
"You're calculating again," Dante said. His voice was a low rumble that cut through the quiet hum of the engine.
I didn't blink. "I'm looking out the window, Mr. Moretti."
"Dante," he corrected sharply, setting his crystal glass on the side table with a dull clink. "We signed a legal certificate in front of three hundred armed men and two federal judges, Mia Cara. You can call me Dante. Or does your memory only reset when you're caught in a lie?"
"I haven't lied to you," I said, keeping my tone breathy, soft, and unbothered—the exact tone Chloe used when she wanted her father to buy her another sports car. "You asked a strange question at the altar. I was just overwhelmed by the heat."
Dante leaned forward suddenly, bridging the distance between us in a single, fluid motion. Before I could draw back, his hand clamped gently around my jaw, his thumb pressing into the hollow beneath my ear, directly over my carotid artery.
"Chloe Vance stammers when she’s cornered," Dante murmured, his dark gray eyes scanning my face with terrifying precision. "She looks at the floor. She reaches for her phone. Her pulse spikes to one hundred and forty, and her skin turns blotchy. But you..."
His thumb caressed my pulse point.
"Your pulse hasn't fluctuated by more than three beats since we got into this car. Your posture is rigid—like an operator waiting for a breacher's charge to detonate. And when I look into your eyes, I don't see a spoiled heiress who spent last summer in Saint-Tropez. I see a ghost who knows how to hide in plain sight."
My heart hammered against my ribs, but I forced my facial muscles to remain completely relaxed. He suspects, but he doesn't have proof. Without proof, I am still the Vance heir under syndicate protection.
"If you don't want me, Dante, you can return me to my father," I whispered, leaning slightly into his touch, using the proximity to lower his guard while my right hand subtly shifted toward my silk clutch. "I'm sure Arthur Vance would be happy to discuss the terms of our marriage contract again."
Dante laughed—a cold, humorless sound that vibrated against my jaw.
"Return a Vance asset before the financial clearing house opens at dawn?" He tilted his head, his thumb pressing slightly harder into my jawline. "Not a chance. Whatever game your father is playing by sending me a wolf in a sheep’s dress, I'm going to enjoy skinning it layer by layer."
The Maybach ground to a halt beneath the imposing iron gates of the Moretti estate. High concrete walls topped with razor wire and infrared security cameras stretched out into the darkness. The iron gates groaned open, and the car rolled up the long, lit driveway toward a glass-and-black-steel mansion built into the side of a jagged sea cliff.
Two minutes later, Dante was leading me up the grand spiral staircase of the estate. Enforcers in dark suits stood at every landing, their eyes trained strictly on the floor as we passed.
He didn't take me to the master suite. He bypassed the double mahogany doors on the second floor and led me down a long, quiet corridor to his private study at the end of the east wing.
He pushed the heavy steel-reinforced door open and tossed his jacket onto a leather couch.
The room was massive, lined with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the crashing waves of the Atlantic below. A giant mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, flanked by six encrypted server towers humming softly in the corner.
The master gateway, I thought, my eyes flicking toward the server lights for a fraction of a second. If I can plug my keylogger into that third node, I can access the syndicate's Swiss clearing house by Thursday.
"Like what you see?" Dante asked, seeing my gaze.
"It's very... masculine," I replied smoothly, stepping into the center of the room. The train of my wedding dress dragged heavily across the polished dark wood floor. "Where is my room, Dante? It's nearly two in the morning, and this dress weighs twenty pounds."
"This is your room tonight," Dante said softly. He walked over to a bar cart, pouring himself another drink. "And you aren't taking that dress off until you give me a name."
I turned to face him, crossing my arms over the beaded lace bodice. "My name is Chloe Vance."
Dante drank his whiskey in one long, slow swallow. Then he set the glass down, turned off the overhead lights with a remote switch, and walked toward me in the dim glow of the moonlight streaming through the oceanfront windows.
He stopped inches from me. The heat radiating off his body was overwhelming, laced with the scent of cedar, tobacco, and expensive bourbon.
"Five years ago, Arthur Vance took out a fifty-million-dollar loan from my father," Dante said softly, his voice dropping into a dark, hypnotic register. "To secure that loan, he provided the genetic registry of his entire family for our security compliance database. Hair samples. Blood types. Medical histories."
My blood ran completely cold. The breath froze in my throat.
Dante reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a sleek, dark smartphone. He tapped the screen once and turned it toward me.
On the screen was an official medical report from the Moretti Central Lab, stamped with a red verification seal from two hours ago.
"The blood sample taken from your veil at the cathedral altar when you grazed your pin didn't match Chloe Vance's profile," Dante whispered, his gray eyes burning through the darkness like molten lead. "Chloe is O-negative. You... are AB-positive."
He took a step closer, crowding me back until the edge of his heavy mahogany desk pressed against the small of my back. He trapped me between his arms, leaning down until his lips were brushed against the shell of my ear.
"Chloe Vance is currently boarding a connecting flight in Dubai under a fake passport," Dante murmured, his hand coming up to gently tracing the line of my collarbone, his touch sending a terrifying shiver straight down my spine. "Which leaves me with a very fascinating question, my lovely little impostor..."
His fingers hooked into the top lace of my wedding gown, pulling me an inch closer to his chest until I could feel the hard, steady rhythm of his heart beating against mine.
"Who the hell are you, and why shouldn't I throw you off this cliff right now?"
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