Chapter 6 - The Confession In The Ashes
Margaret Whitmore gasped for air, her fingernails clawing uselessly at William’s iron grip around her neck.
“In... in the garden!” she choked out, her face turning purple. “The rose garden... beneath the stone fountain!”
William held her there for three long seconds before letting go. Margaret collapsed onto the linoleum floor, coughing violently, her expensive cream suit ruined against the floor.
Bear stepped into the glass room, holding a encrypted satellite radio. “Boss, we’ve got a problem. Two state police cruisers just turned onto the private road. Someone called in an active shooter.”
William didn't flinch. “Block the road with the lead Suburban. Give us ten minutes.”
“Got it,” Bear said, rushing back down the hallway.
William turned back to Margaret. He reached down, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her out of the medical suite, down the grand staircase, and through the shattered glass doors of the patio into the freezing morning fog.
Richard Whitmore was still groaning on the foyer rug, holding his shattered shoulder. William kicked him in the ribs as he passed. “Get up, Richard. You’re coming too.”
Two minutes later, William stood in the center of the estate’s manicured rose garden.
In the center of the garden stood a heavy marble fountain shaped like a weeping angel. At the base of the fountain lay a small, polished bronze urn buried beneath a thin layer of fresh topsoil.
William forced Margaret and Richard down onto their knees in the wet dirt beside the urn.
“Unearth it,” William ordered softly.
Richard was crying now, his face pale with shock and blood loss. “William... please! We can give you money! Ten million! Twenty million! We’ll sign over our shares in Mercy General! Just let us go!”
“Unearth the girl,” William repeated, his tone devoid of all human warmth.
With trembling, blood-stained hands, Richard Whitmore dug into the cold dirt until his fingers pulled the bronze urn from the earth. He set it on the marble edge of the fountain.
William looked at the urn. There was no name engraved on it. No date of birth. No date of death. Just a cheap brass serial number stamped into the bottom by a black-market crematory.
This was all that remained of an eight-year-old child whose mother had sold her for seventy thousand dollars to pay off a casino debt.
William pulled out his phone and snapped three clear, high-resolution photographs of the urn, the medical charts he had brought from the house, and the bleeding couple kneeling in the dirt.
Then he dialed a direct number.
The line rang twice before a sharp, authoritative female voice answered. “State’s Attorney Victoria Vance.”
“Victoria,” William said calmly. “It’s William Castellano.”
A heavy sigh came over the line. “William, I’m currently looking at three emergency calls reporting automatic gunfire at the Whitmore estate in Lake Forest. Tell me your men aren't involved.”
“I’m standing in their rose garden, Victoria,” William said. “And I’m looking at the ashes of an eight-year-old child who was murdered six months ago in a illegal bone marrow harvesting lab inside this house.”
Silence—absolute and heavy—fell over the line. Victoria Vance was a tough, unyielding prosecutor who had spent ten years trying to put William’s family in prison, but she was also a mother.
“What did you say?” Victoria whispered.
“I have the attorney who brokered the sale in my trunk,” William said smoothly. “I have the original medical extractions charts signed by Richard Whitmore. I have the receipts from the Cayman Islands shell company. And I have the urn holding the remains of the first child.”
He paused, looking down at Margaret, who was glaring at him with pure hatred.
“And I have the child who was supposed to be next,” William added. “She’s safe in my house.”
Victoria Vance’s voice shook with sudden, intense authority. “William... stay right where you are. Do not touch them. I am putting five state police tactical units on the road right now. I will handle this personally.”
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“You have twenty minutes, Victoria,” William said softly. “If your units aren't here by then... my men will handle it. And you know how my family handles things.”
He hung up the phone before she could reply.
