THE SHADOW AT THE TABLE

The interrogation room was not a basement cell with dangling lightbulbs—we weren't amateurs. It was the private wine cellar in the basement of Alder & Stone, lined with vintage Bordeaux bottles that cost more than a suburban house, smelling of damp oak, aged earth, and expensive fear.

Elena sat bound to a heavy wooden armchair, her cashmere coat discarded, revealing the simple black silk dress she wore underneath. Her wrists were secured with heavy zip-ties, but her posture remained rigid, defiant. She refused to look at me.

Marcus stood near the far wall, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger, while Leon stood guard by the heavy steel door. Adrian was crouched down, inspecting a bottle of 1982 Château Lafite as if nothing in the world mattered except the tannins.

I poured myself a finger of amber whiskey from a decanter on the tasting table, swirling the liquor slowly before taking a small sip. The burn was clean, familiar, grounding.

"You're protecting him," I said, breaking the heavy silence.

Elena didn't blink. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Victor’s boy," I said, letting the name drop like a lead weight into the room.

The pacing stopped instantly. Marcus froze mid-stride, his head whipping around to stare at me, his eyes wide with genuine shock. Even Adrian set the wine bottle down with a soft clink.

"Victor didn't have a boy," Marcus said quickly. "He had a daughter—Elena. And he died before he could ever adopt anyone else. You know that, Caleb. We buried him together twenty years ago."

"Victor had a younger brother," I replied, keeping my eyes locked on my daughter's face. "A wild card named Julian. Sent away to South America in the nineties after he embezzled from our first major cartel partnership. I thought he died in a federal penitentiary in Bogotá five years ago. But paperwork in foreign prisons can be bought just as easily as politicians."

Elena’s breath hitched. Just a micro-second of hesitation, but in my world, that was a neon sign flashing truth.

"He's back, isn't he?" I asked softly, stepping closer to her chair until I could smell the faint scent of her floral perfume mixed with the metallic tang of rain and adrenaline. "He contacted you six months ago. He filled your head with stories about how I cut his brother out, how I stole the empire, how I left him to rot in a foreign cage while I sat on a throne of blood."

Tears spilled over Elena’s eyelashes, hot and fast. She bit her lower lip so hard a tiny bead of crimson welled up.

"He's my uncle," she whispered, the defiance finally crumbling into raw, shattered grief. "He told me the truth about how my father died, Dad. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't just a random shootout. You pushed him into that alley. You used him as a shield to secure the North River docks, and then you bought him a monument and called yourself a hero!"

The words hit me like a physical blow—not because they were true, but because of how deeply she had been poisoned by the lies.

Before I could answer, a loud, metallic crash echoed from the floor above us.

BOOM.

The heavy ceiling vibrated, showering a fine layer of dust and spiderwebs down from the wine racks.