Chapter 7 - The Interrogation Room
The air inside the concrete holding cell smelled faintly of bleach, damp stone, and old sweat. A single overhead fluorescent tube flickered intermittently, casting a harsh, sickly yellow glow over the cold steel table bolted to the floor.
Daniel Bennett sat in the metal chair, his hands cuffed to a heavy loop anchored in the center of the table. A thin, dried crust of blood still marked his forehead from the car crash, but his posture remained rigid, his shoulders back, his eyes burning with an intense, unyielding fire that made the two armed guards standing near the door visibly uneasy.
The heavy metal door clicked open, and Victor Thorne walked into the room.
Victor wasn't wearing his trench coat anymore; he wore a crisp charcoal suit, looking completely relaxed, like a CEO stepping into a routine morning briefing rather than a man orchestrating a hostile corporate kidnapping. He pulled out the chair opposite Daniel, sat down slowly, and folded his hands neatly on the table.
"Rough night, Daniel," Victor said, his tone dripping with patronizing sympathy. "I told you years ago that you were moving too fast, expanding too aggressively into markets you didn't fully understand. Empire building is a delicate art. It requires patience, allies... and above all, knowing when you've been beaten."
Daniel didn't blink. He stared straight into Victor's eyes, his voice low, steady, and utterly lethal.
"Where is my son?"
Victor chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Always straight to the point. That's what made you such a formidable competitor, Daniel. But right now, you're not sitting in a boardroom. You're sitting in a privatized holding facility owned by a Horizon subsidiary, operating outside standard municipal jurisdiction. You have no phone, no legal representation, and no leverage."
"I asked you a question, Victor," Daniel growled, leaning forward as far as the handcuffs would allow, the heavy metal clanking sharply against the table. "Where is my son? If you or that psychotic puppet you hired laid a single finger on Noah, I will tear your entire conglomerate down to the studs, legal or illegal, and bury you both in federal prison for the rest of your natural lives."
Victor didn't flinch. He simply smiled, leaning back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other.
"Noah is fine, Daniel. He is currently resting very comfortably in his nursery at the Bennett estate—which, I might remind you, is now legally under the administrative control of Horizon Global Logistics, with Sophia acting as his primary legal guardian."
Daniel's breath hitched, his eyes widening in absolute horror. "Guardian? She has no legal standing! That requires a family court judge, a custody hearing, a petition—"
"All of which were filed, processed, and emergency-approved at 4:30 AM this morning by a judge who happens to sit on our corporate advisory board," Victor interrupted smoothly, pulling a crisp, multi-page legal document out of his leather briefcase and sliding it across the table. "Temporary emergency custody granted in light of the father's sudden arrest for domestic endangerment and reckless driving."
Daniel looked down at the paper. His own signature—or rather, a master-encrypted digital signature stamp generated from the stolen hardware token—was plastered neatly at the bottom of the authorization block.
"You forged it," Daniel whispered.
"I utilized legally acquired administrative credentials," Victor corrected with a polite smirk. "Which were handed to us willingly by your lovely fiancée as proof of your unfitness to parent. You see, Daniel, you spent so much time building walls around your business empire that you forgot to check who was already living inside your gates."
Daniel's mind raced. He knew Victor was trying to break him, trying to provoke a reaction that could be used to cement the false charges against him. He forced his breathing to slow down, locking his jaw and pushing the white-hot rage deep down into his chest where it could burn without consuming him.
"You think you've won," Daniel said, his voice dropping to a dangerously calm whisper. He looked up, locking eyes with Victor with an expression so intensely cold that the older businessman momentarily stopped smiling. "You think stealing a company and forging a custody document makes you a winner. But you don't know the first thing about Sophia."
Victor frowned slightly, his amusement faltering. "What are you talking about?"
"You think she's loyal to you because you funded her father's failing shipping lines?" Daniel let out a dark, cynical laugh. "Victor, Sophia doesn't care about your company, and she sure as hell doesn't care about your family name. She spent six months studying every vulnerability in my system. What makes you think she hasn't spent the last two years cataloging every single off-the-books transaction, every illegal bribe, and every shell corporation tied to Horizon Global Logistics?"
Victor’s face tightened. "That's a bluff."
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"Is it?" Daniel tilted his head, a dangerous smirk forming on his own lips. "Check your encrypted primary server back at headquarters, Victor. Right about... now."
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