Chapter 7 - The Interrogation in Federal Holding
At 10:00 AM the following Tuesday, inside the subterranean maximum-security interview suite of the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, sixty-two-year-old Harrison Mercer sat handcuffed to a stainless-steel table.
He wore a drab, oversized orange corrections jumpsuit, having lost fifteen pounds over five days of solitary confinement after his bail was denied under federal racketeering and attempted capital murder conspiracy statutes.
His hair was unwashed, uncombed, and wild, his face sallow and gray under the buzzing fluorescent tubes, his hands shaking in constant, rhythmic tremors. Stripped of his tailored pinstripe suits, his private yachts, his stolen millions, and his manufactured high-society arrogance, he looked like a broken, hollow shell of a man.
Sitting on the other side of the soundproof glass partition, weeping hysterically in an identical orange jumpsuit, was Vivian Mercer. Her manicured acrylic nails were bitten to the quick, her designer blowout reduced to greasy, disheveled strands.
The heavy steel security door buzzed and clicked open with a concussive clatter:
CLANG.
Stepping into the room, dressed in an immaculate bespoke three-piece charcoal Italian wool suit, his six-foot-four frame casting a dark, terrifying shadow across the room, was Kane Croft.
Beside Kane walked myself, Harper Hayes, wearing an elegant royal-emerald tailored wool overcoat, my posture straight, majestic, and completely at peace.
Arthur Vance Senior strode behind us, his silver-headed walking cane striking the concrete floor with chilling finality:
CLACK. CLACK.
Harrison and Vivian looked up, their bloodshot eyes widening with desperate, pathetic hope as they leaned across the cold steel table, their transport chains rattling against the anchor ring.
"Kane...?! Harper... Arthur, thank God!" Harrison choked out, his voice cracking into raw, sniveling whimpers. "Did you talk to the United States Attorney?! Did Vincent tell you about the Swiss settlement?! It was Vivian's idea, Kane! I swear on my life! Vivian told me that your wolf was breaking! She said the silver nitrate was an experimental stabilizer! You have to get me out of this cell, Kane! The inmates in this block... they know what the charges are! They know I tried to poison an Alpha! I won't survive thirty days in this facility!"
Vivian wailed, clawing at the partition: "Kane! Please! Tell the prosecutors I loved you! I was trying to save you from yourself! Harper is just an uneducated mountain girl who took advantage of your delirium! I’ll sign over the Mercer estate! I’ll sign an eviction waiver! Just don't let them send me to a federal penitentiary for thirty years!"
Kane did not sit down.
He stood towering over the table, his slate-amber eyes colder than an Arctic blizzard, looking down at the monsters who had calculated his madness drop by drop.
"You measured the poison in milliliters, Vivian," Kane said softly, every word sharp as surgical diamond. "You stood in that foyer, watched my hands shake, watched my wolf tear at my ribs, and laughed that I was an uncontrollable beast."
"I was under pressure, Kane!" Vivian sobbed, tears and snot dripping freely onto the stainless steel. "The business stress was breaking my mind! Forgive me... please, God, forgive me!"
Arthur Vance Senior stepped forward, sliding a single legal document across the table.
"Harrison Mercer and Vivian Mercer," Arthur spoke, his deep baritone rolling off the cinderblock walls like an executioner’s drumbeat. "Under the Universal Lineal Disinheritance, Preclusion, and Civil Asset Forfeiture Decree signed yesterday by Chief Judge Eleanor Bradley, your names have been permanently excised from every corporate, civic, and territorial registry in the Pacific Northwest."
Arthur pointed to the document.
"You have zero claim to the Mercer estate. You have zero claim to the timber trust. You leave this life with precisely zero dollars, zero assets, and eighty-four million dollars in non-dischargeable federal restitution debt."
Harrison stared at the paper, his hands trembling so violently that the steel handcuffs rattled against the anchor ring.
"And the Cascade Pack...?" Harrison whispered, his voice barely audible. "What happens to the debt Richard Hayes signed?"
I looked down at them for the last time in my life.
May you like
"The Cascade Pack has been merged into the sovereign crown of the Olympic territories this morning, Harrison," I answered quietly, turning toward the heavy steel door. "Where honest families earn living wages... and poisoners rot in the dark."
The steel door opened with a heavy magnetic clunk, and Kane, Arthur, and I walked out into the corridor, leaving the prisoners' broken wails to echo uselessly against the concrete walls.
