Chapter 7 - The Interrogation Room
The interrogation room at the federal holding facility off Monument Avenue smelled of cheap coffee, damp wool, and twenty years of institutional despair. A single, heavy-shaded metal lamp hung over a scarred oak table, casting a harsh yellow cone of light onto Daniel’s bound wrists.
The door clicked open, and Detective Angela Brooks walked in, carrying a thick manila folder and a steaming paper cup. She didn't sit down immediately. Instead, she paced the length of the narrow room, her eyes fixed on Daniel with a dangerous mixture of professional fury and personal betrayal.
"You lied to my face, Daniel," Brooks said, tossing the folder onto the table with a sharp slap. "You stood in St. Jude’s hospital acting like a concerned citizen while your old underworld buddies were coordinating a hit squad, and your brother—the dead ghost you forgot to bury properly—was running a human trafficking pipeline through a children's charity."
"Vincent isn't my partner, Angela," Daniel said, his voice raspy in the dry air. He didn't look down at his cuffed hands; his dark eyes tracked her every movement. "He’s a cancer I should have excised twelve years ago."
"Well, the federal prosecutor doesn't care about family history," Brooks shot back, pulling out a chair and sitting down hard. She slid a printed financial ledger across the table. "Look at that. Primary endowment transfer, dated four years ago. Two point five million dollars wired from a Cayman shell company directly into Sarah’s Haven. And the authorizing signature at the bottom? Yours, notarized by a firm that hasn't existed since the nineties."
Daniel glanced at the paper. The signature was a flawless forgery—so clean, so precise, that even his own hand would have struggled to tell the difference. Eamon must have stolen his template years ago before the split.
"It's a fabrication," Daniel said flatly.
"Try telling that to a federal grand jury when they find out the property deeds to the warehouse where Elena was held are registered under a blind trust controlled by your holding company," Brooks leaned forward, lowering her voice. "The feds think you're the head of the snake, Daniel. They think the philanthropist act was just a long game to launder syndicate blood money through orphans."
"And what do you think?" Daniel asked softly.
Brooks stared at him for a long, agonizing moment, the fluorescent light humming overhead. "I think you're a dangerous man who thought he could outrun his past. But right now, what I think doesn't matter. What matters is that Lily and Maddie are currently in protective custody at a safe house three miles from here, guarded by state troopers who have orders to let no one near them—including you."
The mention of his daughters made Daniel’s jaw tighten so hard a muscle flickered in his cheek. "And Elena?"
"Recovering at Mercy General under heavy guard," Brooks said, standing up and grabbing her file. "She’s coherent. And she told us something interesting before the sedatives kicked in. She said the key Lily found under the flowers wasn't for a bank deposit box."
Daniel looked up sharply. "What was it for?"
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"A safety deposit locker at the Dayton Greyhound station," Brooks said at the door, her hand resting on the brass handle. "And according to the station manifest, someone just checked in to claim it twenty minutes ago."
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