Chapter Six: Questions He Won't Answer
752 Words
The lockdown siren didn't stop for almost twenty minutes.
Isabella and Salvatore made it back to their cell seconds before the doors slammed shut in unison down the length of the block, the sound echoing like gunfire against concrete. She sank onto the bottom bunk, breath still coming fast, while Salvatore stood near the bars with his back to her, watching the corridor through narrowed eyes as guards moved past in tight, urgent formation.
"You think I'm working for them," she said again, because he hadn't answered the first time, and the silence had been eating a hole through her chest ever since.
He didn't turn around immediately. When he finally did, his expression had smoothed back into something unreadable, though she'd learned enough in less than a day to know that calm face meant he was thinking harder than he let on.
"I don't know what to think," he said. "That's the problem."
"I've been in this facility less than twenty-four hours, Salvatore. I didn't plant a bug in your cell. I haven't spoken to a single person besides you and a guard who took my mother's cross away from me." Her voice cracked on the last part, and she hated herself for it.
Salvatore watched her for a long moment. Then he crossed the cell and sat down on the edge of the bunk across from her, close enough that she could see the tension still coiled in his shoulders.
"Tell me about the trial," he said.
"Why does that matter right now?"
"Because if you're lying, it'll show up in the details. People who fabricate stories forget things, contradict themselves." His voice was quiet, almost gentle, but the words were clinical. "And if you're telling the truth, I need to understand how deep this goes."
Isabella swallowed hard. She should probably be angry at being interrogated like a suspect. But there was something in his tone, not accusation, but urgency, that made her want to answer honestly instead of storming away.
"I worked at Hallway and Struss for six years. Financial auditing, mostly corporate clients. Eighteen months ago I got assigned to audit Vantage Logistics before they went public."
"And you found something."
"Payments routed through shell accounts in Delaware and the Caymans that didn't match any legitimate shipping contracts. Numbers that looked like laundering, though I didn't have proof at the time." She stared down at her hands. "I flagged it to my supervisor. Two weeks later, I was pulled off the account. Three months after that, federal investigators showed up at my apartment with a warrant."
"Using what evidence."
"Six years of transaction records with my digital signature on transfers I never authorized. Emails I supposedly sent that I never wrote." Her voice had gone flat, exhausted. "Nobody believed someone could fabricate that much evidence. It's easier to believe the auditor got greedy than to believe an entire company falsified six years of records to bury her."
Salvatore was quiet for a long moment, studying her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
"That's exactly how they operate," he said finally. "Manufacture a paper trail so thorough that questioning it makes you sound paranoid. I know because it's the same thing they did to me."
"Who's 'they,' Salvatore? You keep saying Varela like I'm supposed to understand what that means."
He hesitated, and for the first time since she'd met him, she saw something like genuine reluctance cross his face.
"The Varela family has been fighting my family for territory and influence for almost two decades," he said slowly. "Shipping routes, distribution networks, political protection. When my father died and I took over, they saw an opening."
"An opening to what?"
"To destroy everything he built. And apparently," his jaw tightened, "to use Vantage Logistics as one of their fronts for laundering money that funds operations against my family."
"They were mob money."
"Mob money that led straight back to the people who wanted me buried under federal charges." He leaned forward slightly, voice dropping. "Isabella, if what you're telling me is true, you didn't stumble into some unrelated fraud case. You found the exact evidence that could unravel the case against me. Which means you're not a coincidence in this cell."
"Then what am I?"
Before he could answer, the cell block's intercom crackled to life, and a guard's voice cut through the tension with words that made Salvatore go rigid beside her.
"Cosa. Warden wants you in his office. Now. And bring the girl."
- Writer
