Chapter 3 - The Interrogation in the Study Nico Falcone entered the private study wearing his immaculate security uniform, his silver-streaked hair neatly combed, maintaining his usual mask of calm efficiency. "You wanted to see me, Mr. Moretti? The capos upstairs are getting restless about the shipping delay."
Dominic sat behind his massive mahogany desk, the glowing city lights casting long shadows across his face. He didn't offer Nico a seat. He simply slid a single sheet of paper across the dark wood—a restored fragment of a security camera backup that showed Clara Vance being escorted into the basement service elevator late at night by two men wearing standard Corven Tower security uniforms.
Nico glanced at the paper, but his pulse didn't spike—at least, not noticeably. He was a professional survivor who had worked the underworld for twenty years.
"Clara Vance," Nico said smoothly, shaking his head with manufactured sorrow. "A tragic situation. She was a quiet woman. Left her shift one night and never came back. We assumed she skipped town."
"She left her children behind in a freezing lobby for thirty-eight days, waiting for a mother who never returned," Dominic replied, his voice like grinding ice. "She didn't skip town, Nico. She was a cleaning woman. What could a cleaning woman possibly see in this tower that required her erasure?"
Nico swallowed, maintaining his poise. "Mr. Moretti, with all due respect, cleaners have access to every executive office after hours. Maybe she stole something valuable and fled out of fear."
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"Or maybe," Dominic said, standing up and towering over the security chief, "she walked into an office she shouldn't have been in, and found proof that someone inside my own organization was leaking our shipping routes to the federal prosecutor."
Silence fell over the room, heavy and suffocating. Nico’s eyes flickered for a fraction of a second toward the door—toward the escape route. And in that microsecond of hesitation, Dominic knew.
