Chapter 3: The Boardroom Interrogation

The next morning, Michael walked into the executive boardroom of Kane Holdings exactly forty-three minutes late. He had never been late to a syndicate meeting in his entire life.

Julian Vance was already sitting at the absolute head of the massive glass table, confidently running through the quarterly laundering numbers with the executive captains.

Julian stood up the moment Michael walked through the heavy double doors, flashing a bright, loyal smile.

“Michael, we were starting to get worried,” Julian said smoothly, buttoning his tailored suit jacket. “Traffic on the Kennedy Expressway?”

“Sit down, Julian,” Michael commanded. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a terrifying, lethal weight that instantly silenced the room.

The other six syndicate captains slowly sat down, exchanging nervous, confused glances. Michael did not sit.

He walked slowly to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Chicago skyline, clasping his hands behind his back. The silence in the room stretched out, becoming suffocating and unbearable.

Michael spoke without turning around to look at the men.

“October, fifteen years ago,” Michael stated calmly. “There was an untraceable wire transfer of three hundred thousand dollars from my father’s personal offshore account directly to a shell corporation you controlled.”

The room temperature instantly plummeted. The captains stopped breathing.

Julian’s face did not move. His smile remained frozen, but his eyes darted rapidly toward the door.

Michael did not need Julian’s face to move. He had spent two bloody decades reading the microscopic pauses of men who lied for a living. The half-second hesitation before Julian’s reply told Michael absolutely everything he needed to know.

“Michael?” Julian asked, his voice dripping with feigned confusion. “That was a very long time ago. Your father handled his own private accounts.”

“My father is dead, Julian,” Michael replied, finally turning around to face the table.

“Yes, he is,” Julian agreed cautiously, his hands resting flat on the glass table.

“But you are still alive,” Michael pointed out.

It wasn’t a threat. It was an observation of a fact that could change at any given second. A painfully long, terrifying pause consumed the boardroom.

“What exactly would you like to know, Michael?” Julian asked quietly, dropping the friendly facade entirely.

Michael stepped forward. His face was the exact face that had made a federal prosecutor drop a RICO case just to save his own family. It was the face of a monster waking up.

“I want everything,” Michael demanded, placing both hands on the table and leaning directly into Julian’s space. “I want the names of the men you hired. I want the routes she took out of the city. I want to know if she was threatened, if she was followed, and if anyone under your command laid a single hand on her.”

“Michael, you don’t understand the context of what your father was protecting you from…”

“You will tell me the truth by the end of this hour, Julian,” Michael interrupted, his voice a low, vibrating growl. “And you will not lie to me. Because if you lie to me about the mother of my children, I will find out, and I will be very, very disappointed.”

He let the word disappointed sit in the dead air like a loaded gun resting on the table.

Julian slowly stood up. He looked at the six other captains, but none of them met his eyes. They were loyal to the throne, and Julian was just a highly paid servant who had crossed a lethal line.

Julian swallowed hard, nodding once. It was the nod of a man who suddenly realized his entire life had just become provisional.

And just like that, the entire chessboard of Chicago’s underworld violently flipped. The boss was no longer hunting rival syndicates or federal agents. He was hunting the buried truth.

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