Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
The drive back to the Cross estate was an agonizing exercise in absolute terror.
Damian didn't speak. He drove like a man possessed, weaving through traffic, running red lights, his white knuckles gripping the steering wheel so tightly the leather groaned.
Elena sat huddled in the back seat, clutching her torn apron, her mind racing. She knew what happened to informants in the mafia. They were taken to abandoned slaughterhouses, interrogated for days, and buried in unmarked graves beneath the concrete.
When the SUV screeched through the estate's iron gates and slammed to a halt in front of the main mansion, Damian killed the engine.
The quiet inside the car was deafening.
Damian unlocked the doors. "Get out."
Elena pushed the door open with trembling hands and stepped onto the wet driveway. Rain immediately soaked her hair and clothes.
Damian walked around the car, grabbed her wrist, and hauled her into the house. He didn't take her to the warm library. He didn't take her to the maid's quarters.
He dragged her down the narrow wooden stairs that led to the dark, stone-walled basement beneath the wine cellar.
He pushed her into a cold, windowless room containing only an iron chair, a single hanging lightbulb, and solid stone walls.
He slammed the heavy iron door shut.
CLICK.
The sound of the deadbolt sliding into place echoed through the room like a sentence of death.
"Damian!" Elena screamed, running to the door and pounding her fists against the cold iron. "Damian, open the door! Please! Listen to me!"
"You lied to me," Damian's cold voice echoed through the small iron grille near the top of the door. "From the very first second you walked into my house. You were Thomas Vance's daughter."
"I had no choice!" Elena cried, tears streaming down her face, pressing her lips against the cold grille. "My father was murdered! The Morettis burned our house down! I had nowhere to go, no one to trust! I saw an ad for a domestic worker at your estate and I knew... I knew you were the only man in Chicago powerful enough to keep me alive!"
A long, heavy silence stretched on the other side of the door.
"Is there a ledger?" Damian asked, his voice completely flat.
Elena choked back a sob. "Yes. My father left an encrypted flash drive containing three decade's worth of evidence on the Moretti family... and on your syndicate."
"And where is it?"
"I don't have it," Elena whispered, her forehead resting against the cold iron door. "I swear to you on my life, Damian. I don't have it. My father hid it in a safety deposit box at the First National Bank. I only have the key code."
"Why didn't you sell it to the federal prosecutors?" Damian asked smoothly. "They would have put you in witness protection."
"Because witness protection couldn't save us!" Elena screamed, her voice breaking completely. "The federal marshals are corrupt! The DA's office is full of Moretti informants! If I went to them, we would have been dead in twenty-four hours!"
We.
The word hung in the air like a siren.
On the other side of the door, Damian’s eyes narrowed. "We?"
Elena closed her eyes tight, realizing what she had just said. Panic, cold and absolute, seized her soul. She had sworn to protect Lily with her life, but now... now she was trapped in an iron cell, and time was running out.
"Elena," Damian’s voice dropped into a terrifyingly dangerous whisper. "Who is we?"
Elena slid down the cold iron door until she was sitting on the damp stone floor, her knees pulled to her chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
"My daughter," Elena wept, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces. "My four-year-old daughter, Lily. She's hiding across the city in a basement with her old nurse. She's sick, Damian. She has asthma, she’s out of medicine, and the Morettis are watching the building right now."
Silence.
Absolute, horrifying, complete silence.
Elena held her breath, listening through the iron door. She heard no footsteps. She heard no movement.
"Damian?" she called out softly, her voice trembling. "Damian, please... kill me if you have to. Take the ledger. Destroy it, burn it, use it to destroy the Morettis. But please... save my baby. She’s innocent. Please..."
No answer came.
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A moment later, she heard heavy footsteps walking away down the stone corridor, fading into nothingness.
She was left alone in the dark, cold cell, illuminated only by a single flickering bulb, weeping for the child she could no longer protect.
