Chapter 6 - Confessions in the DarkThe guards dropped their weapons before the first click of a safety could even register. They knew better than to test the Moretti name when the patriarch had blood in his eyes.
Julian Petrovic’s face turned ashen. He looked around frantically for an escape route, but every exit was sealed.
"Take his gun," I commanded, and two of my enforcers rushed up the gantry, disarming Julian and shoving him hard against the rusted railing.
I climbed the metal stairs slowly, my footsteps echoing in the massive, hollow space. Camille backed away until her spine hit the iron beam, her breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. The cool, calculated socialite was gone, replaced by a cornered animal terrified of the reckoning she had provoked.
"Roman, please," she stammered, her eyes wide with manufactured tears. "It was Julian! He manipulated me! He said—he said you killed my father!"
"Stop talking, Camille," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. I stopped two feet in front of her. "It’s embarrassing. You rehearsed that speech in front of the mirror, didn't you?"
She stared at me, trembling.
"Now," I continued, turning my gaze to Julian, who was struggling against my men. "Let's talk about Isabella. My wife died of sudden respiratory failure eighteen months ago. No autopsy. Clean paperwork certified by Arthur Velez. But looking at the timeline... that was right around the time you and Camille finalized your little partnership."
Julian spat a glob of blood onto the metal grating. "Go to hell, Moretti. Prove it."
I didn't blink. I pulled a small, heavy black drive from my pocket—the one Naomi had pulled from Arthur’s encrypted server an hour before we left.
"I don't need to prove it in court, Julian. This is a private conversation between businessmen." I tossed the drive to Vance. "Play the audio file from eighteen months ago."
Vance tapped his tablet. A crackling audio recording began to play over the refinery's old PA system, echoing off the metal walls.
“...dose is too high, she’ll go into cardiac arrest before we can stage the asthma attack...”
Camille’s voice rang out clearly through the speakers.
“...make it look like natural complications. The idiot husband is in New York. By the time he gets back, she’ll be in the ground and Arthur will have the estate freeze filed...”
The color drained entirely from Camille’s face. She stared at the speaker as if it were a ghost.
"You killed her," I whispered, the words tasting like ash and venom in my mouth. "Isabella wasn't sick. You murdered the mother of my children because she stood between you and my vault."
"She was weak!" Camille suddenly shrieked, snapping under the pressure, her mask shattering completely. "Just like those brats of yours! She deserved to die for trusting a monster like you!"
The moment the words left her mouth, every muscle in my body seized. The restraint I had maintained for hours fractured.
I lunged forward, grabbing her by the collar of her trench coat and lifting her off her feet, slamming her against the steel gantry railing. The drop below was forty feet into the concrete floor.
"Roman! Boss! No!" Vance shouted, grabbing my arm. "Not here. Not like this. Let the court finish her."
I held her suspended over the drop, her legs kicking frantically in the air, her face turning purple as my grip crushed her throat.
"You think I care about a courtroom, Camille?" I hissed, my face inches from hers. "You terrorized my babies. You murdered my wife. You woke up a sleeping goddamn dragon."
"Roman..." she choked out, her fingernails clawing uselessly at my wrists.
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I stared into her terrified eyes for three long seconds—seconds that felt like an eternity. Then, with a disgusted grunt, I hurled her backward onto the steel grating. She collapsed into a heap, gasping for air, coughing and weeping hysterically.
"Tie them up," I ordered, turning my back on her with absolute contempt. "We're taking them home."
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