Chapter 8 - The Hotel Room
At 10:15 AM, the door to Room 412 at the Grand Regency Hotel was unlocked from the outside.
Crystal Reeves—a pale, thin woman with bleach-blond hair, wearing a cheap satin robe—sat on the edge of the king-sized bed, counting a stack of hundred-dollar bills she had pulled from her purse.
Beside her lay a glass pipe and two empty bottles of champagne provided by the hotel room service.
When William Castellano walked into the room, followed by Bear, Crystal didn't even look up at first.
“Did Arthur send the rest of the money?” Crystal asked lazily, running a crimson fingernail over the cash. “He promised another twenty grand once the girl was delivered to the estate.”
William stopped three feet from the bed. He looked down at the woman who had carried Diana for nine months, only to sell her like a piece of used furniture to satisfy a gambling debt.
“The girl wasn't delivered, Crystal,” William said softly.
Crystal paused, her fingers freezing on the cash. She looked up, her bloodshot eyes widening as she recognized William Castellano’s face from the local news and newspaper front pages.
“You...” Crystal stammered, scrambling backward on the bed, her face turning chalk-white. “Who... who are you? Where is Arthur?”
“Arthur is in federal custody,” William said flatly. “And Richard and Margaret Whitmore are being processed at the Cook County Jail for murder, human trafficking, and child abuse.”
Crystal’s breath hitched. She dropped the money onto the bedsheets. “I... I don't know what you’re talking about! I signed legal guardianship papers! It was a private adoption! A judge approved it!”
“No judge approved it, Crystal,” William corrected calmly. “You took fifty thousand dollars from a Cayman Islands shell company to let a rich family harvest your daughter’s bone marrow until she died.”
Crystal went hysterical, waving her hands wildly. “She was my daughter! I raised her! I fed her! I was in debt! They told me she’d live in a big house with a swimming pool! They lied to me!”
William didn't raise his voice. He didn't scream. He simply reached into his coat, pulled out a heavy manila envelope, and tossed it onto the bed over her pile of cash.
Inside were the photographs of Diana’s scarred arms, the medical extraction kits, and the bronze urn containing the remains of the first child.
Crystal looked at the photos. Her eyes filled with sudden, uncontrollable panic. “No... no, no, no...”
“She ran away from them, Crystal,” William said, his voice dropping to a icy register that cut through her hysterics like a knife. “She ran barefoot through the rain for three miles. She came to my car at 11:47 PM. Do you know what she told me?”
Crystal shook her head frantically, crying now—not out of remorse, but out of absolute, terrified self-preservation.
“She said her mother sold her,” William whispered. “And she asked me if I was going to take her back.”
William stepped closer, leaning down until his dark, pitiless eyes were inches from Crystal’s face.
“I promised her I wouldn't,” William said. “And William Castellano never breaks a promise.”
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the room.
Two state police officers, accompanied by Victoria Vance’s chief investigator, stepped through the open door holding a federal arrest warrant.
“Crystal Reeves,” the investigator announced coldly. “You’re under arrest for federal human trafficking, child endangerment, and conspiracy to commit murder.”
The officers grabbed Crystal’s arms, pulling her off the bed and forcing her hands behind her back into steel cuffs.
As they dragged her weeping out of the room, Crystal looked back at William, screaming hysterically. “She’s my child! You can’t take her from me! You’re a gangster! You have no right!”
William stood alone in the hotel room, watching the rain hit the glass. He picked up the stack of hundred-dollar bills from the bed—the fifty thousand dollars Crystal had received for her daughter’s life.
He turned to Bear. “Take this cash. Establish a private trust fund in Diana’s name. Every cent of this money will pay for her education, her medical care, and her future.”
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“And the rest, boss?” Bear asked.
“The rest,” William said, walking out into the corridor, “we spend on making sure nobody ever touches her again.”
