Chapter 4 - The Interrogation Room
The holding facility at the Florence international terminal smelled sharply of industrial cleaning supplies, stale coffee, and cold masonry.
I sat across a stainless-steel table in a small, windowless interrogation room, my hands cuffed lightly to a metal ring bolted to the center of the surface. Across from me sat Special Agent Vance, flanked by an Italian federal prosecutor and a local police translator who looked profoundly bored.
Spread out across the table in neat, color-coded binders were the very documents Dakota had handed me on the plane—and dozens more.
“Let’s not waste everyone’s time, Mr. Bennett,” Agent Vance said, opening a thick ledger containing my forged Delaware shell company wire transfers. “We have your electronic signature, your personal IP address logs, your corporate email trails, and sworn depositions from three separate junior accountants who stated you coerced them into altering regional logistics logs.”
“I want a lawyer,” I muttered, staring stubbornly at the stainless-steel table.
“You’ll have a court-appointed public defender assigned by tomorrow morning,” Vance replied indifferently. “Right now, we are trying to determine whether you acted alone or if your corporate co-conspirators in the domestic shipping division were also involved.”
“I acted alone,” I snapped, realizing that trying to drag anyone else into the wreckage was pointless. The trap was too airtight.
Agent Vance closed the binder with a sharp slap against the table.
“Good. That will make your guilty plea considerably more straightforward when you’re extradited back to the United States next week,” he said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. “You’re looking at a minimum of ten to fifteen years in a federal penitentiary for interstate wire fraud, tax evasion, and corporate embezzlement.”
He motioned to the guards standing near the door, and they immediately unlocked my cuffs, hauled me to my feet, and led me down a sterile, echoing concrete hallway toward the temporary holding cells.
As they shoved me inside the cold, barred cell with a heavy clang, the sheer, crushing reality of my new existence finally settled over me.
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My career was incinerated. My wealth was seized. My freedom was gone. My mistress had abandoned me in a foreign airport without a second thought. And my wife—the woman I had condescendingly dismissed as a domestic housewife—had systematically dismantled my entire existence in a matter of months.
I sat down hard on the narrow metal cot, burying my face in my hands as the cold stone walls closed in around me.
