Chapter 10: The Confession Tape
The heavy steel door of the security holding room slammed shut with a definitive, metallic thud that echoed off the bare concrete walls. Miller slumped into the metal chair at the center of the room, his expensive silk tie loosened and sweat beading on his forehead as he stared up at the two federal marshals standing silently by the door.
Vincent stood leaning against the concrete pillar with his arms crossed, while Eleanor sat regally at the metal table, sliding an audio recorder across the stainless-steel surface.
"You can play hardball for your employers all you want, Mr. Miller," Eleanor said, her tone dangerously calm. "But aiding and abetting corporate arson and tampering with federal evidence carries a mandatory twenty-year sentence without the possibility of parole. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in a maximum-security facility for the Vance family?"
Miller swallowed hard, glancing down at the Pelican case sitting unopened on the floor between his feet. He reached out with trembling fingers, pushing the case forward. "Julianna gave me the keys six months ago," he muttered, his voice raspy and defeated. "She knew the internal audit was coming. She made me promise that if the board ever started looking into the 2018 fire reports, I'd make sure the physical backups vanished before the police could subpoena them."
I stepped out from the shadows near the back of the room, my boots clicking softly against the concrete floor until I stood directly across the table from him. Miller flinched as he looked up and recognized my face, the color draining entirely from his cheeks.
"L-Lucia?" he whispered, his eyes widening in superstitious terror as if he were staring at a ghost. "You... you were in the linen room. The fire marshal said nobody could have survived that heat."
"I survived," I said, my voice steady, cold, and stripped of all fear. "And now every single document, every wire transfer, and every voice mail you and Julianna exchanged regarding the sabotage of the estate's fire suppression system is sitting on that flash drive inside this case."
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Vincent stepped up beside me, wrapping a warm, solid arm around my waist, grounding me against the remaining ghosts of my past. He looked down at the cowering lawyer with absolute contempt. "The federal prosecutor is already waiting upstairs with the grand jury indictments, Miller. Your only way out of a twenty-year sentence is to press record on that machine and state every instruction Julianna Vance gave you from the very beginning."
Miller looked between Vincent's cold stare and the federal marshals blocking the exit. With a shaky sigh, he reached out, pressed the red button on the recorder, and began to speak into the microphone, his confession filling the small room and sealing the fate of the Vance family once and for all.
