Chapter 5 - The Interrogation in the Kitchen
By Friday afternoon, the atmosphere inside the Wolf estate had shifted from a quiet funeral home to a fortress preparing for war.
Blacked-out SUVs lined the long curved driveway. Men in dark suits with concealed automatic weapons walked the perimeter of the grounds. Inside the house, Norah no longer wore her faded gray cleaning uniform. At Gideon’s explicit instruction, Arthur had provided her with a dark, tailored trousers suit and a discreet radio earpiece.
She stood in the estate’s secondary basement—a cold, windowless room made of reinforced concrete that smelled of damp earth and old iron.
In the center of the room, Chef Paul Renner sat tied to a heavy wooden chair under a single bare light bulb. His face was bruised, his clothes torn, and his body shook with uncontrollable panic.
Gideon Wolf sat fifteen feet away in a heavy leather armchair. He was wrapped in a dark cashmere coat to keep warm, his face still pale and sunken, but his presence filled the cold room like heavy smoke.
Arthur stood beside him, holding a thick manila folder. Norah stood half a step behind Gideon’s right shoulder, holding a tray with a glass of pure, tested spring water.
“Let’s try this again, Paul,” Arthur said softly, flipping open the folder. “You said Vane met you at the harbor. Where?”
“At... at Pier 14!” Paul sobbed, his voice raw. “Behind the fish processing plant! Every Tuesday night at eleven! He’d give me an envelope with five thousand dollars cash and a new bottle of the pink extract!”
“And what was the plan for tomorrow night?” Gideon asked quietly from his chair.
Paul flinched at the sound of Gideon’s voice. He lowered his head, tears dripping onto the concrete floor.
“Vane said... he said you’d be dead by Friday morning,” Paul whispered. “He said tomorrow night at the harbor council meeting, Rossi would present a forged handwritten will showing you had sold your harbor shares to his family before you died. He said no one would question it because you were already sick.”
Gideon took a slow sip of the water Norah handed him.
“A forged will,” Gideon mused softly. “Vincenzo always did have a dramatic flair.”
Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the basement creaked open.
One of Arthur’s junior lieutenants, a muscular man named Marcus, stepped into the room holding a black satellite phone.
“Boss,” Marcus said, looking tense. “We just intercepted a encrypted radio broadcast from Pier 14. Rossi’s men are moving heavy equipment into Freight Terminal 3. They’ve brought in forty armed men from out of state.”
Arthur cursed under his breath. “They’re locking down the harbor early. If we try to push through tomorrow night with our current escort, we’ll be walking into an ambush. And in your current condition, Boss... you can’t survive a gunfight.”
Gideon didn't look alarmed. He set his water glass back onto Norah’s tray.
“We aren't going to fight them at the harbor, Arthur,” Gideon said calmly.
Arthur frowned. “Then what are we doing?”
“Rossi expects me to be dead,” Gideon said, a cold, predatory gleam appearing in his icy gray eyes. “He expects a body. So we are going to give him one.”
He looked up at Norah.
“Norah,” Gideon said softly. “You know about medicine. What happens if a patient on high-dose statins suffers a sudden, catastrophic muscular collapse while being moved?”
Norah thought for a second. “Their blood pressure drops to near zero. Their pulse becomes almost imperceptible. To someone without clinical equipment, they would appear clinically dead.”
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Gideon smiled. It was a terrifying, brilliant sight.
“Get Dr. Mercer down here,” Gideon ordered. “Tell him he has twelve hours to prepare a medical transport van that looks like a coroner’s hearse.”
