Chapter 8 - The Interrogation Room
Three miles away, inside the cold, fluorescent-lit basement of the 14th Precinct, Julian Thorne sat at a scratched wooden table. His hands were cuffed in front of him, the metal chain clinking softly whenever he moved. The sharp cuts on his palms had been cleaned and wrapped in white medical gauze by a paramedic an hour ago, but he refused the ice pack offered for his bruised wrists.
Across from him sat Detective Sarah Miller—a sharp-eyed woman in her late forties with graying hair pulled back into a tight bun. She had a thick manila folder open on the table between them, overflowing with financial printouts, bank transfer records, and photograph printouts of Meilin's injuries taken at the hospital earlier that night.
"You're in a lot of trouble, Mr. Thorne," Detective Miller said, tapping a pen against the folder. "We have the physical evidence of domestic abuse. We have the witness statement from Arthur Vance. And about twenty minutes ago, the FBI financial crimes unit confirmed that the digital encryption keys provided by your wife match the master accounts used in a two-hundred-million-dollar wire fraud scheme."
Julian stared at her, his face completely devoid of emotion. He didn't look like a man who had just lost his empire. He looked like a grandmaster analyzing a chess board after a minor piece loss.
"My wife is mentally unstable, Detective," Julian said calmly, his voice smooth and hypnotic. "She has suffered from severe prenatal depression during this pregnancy. She imagines threats where none exist. The mark on her face? She fell in the bathroom two days ago. I tried to help her, but in her state of confusion, she panicked."
Miller chuckled darkly, shaking her head. "And the crowbar fight with Arthur Vance? The smart lock logs that show the door was forcibly held shut from the inside? Was that prenatal depression too?"
"Arthur Vance is a disgruntled former business partner who has been stalking my family for months," Julian replied without missing a beat. "He manipulated my wife’s fragile mental state to gain access to proprietary corporate algorithms. Everything you have in that folder is fruit of the poisonous tree—illegally obtained digital data stolen by an unauthorized third party."
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Detective Miller leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, staring directly into Julian's dark eyes. "You really believe you're going to talk your way out of this, don't you?"
"I don't need to talk my way out," Julian smiled—a cold, empty flash of white teeth. "My legal team will be here in five minutes. And when they arrive, you will realize that every minute you keep me in this chair is costing your department a six-figure civil rights lawsuit."
