Chapter 7 - The Red Detonator
“I pressed the button.”
The words paralyzed the entire room.
Roman rushed down the marble stairs, falling to his knees beside Dante’s broken body. He frantically searched his uncle’s bloody hands, prying the stiffening fingers open.
The small black remote control was clutched in Dante’s left hand.
The red button was depressed.
“No,” Roman whispered, the sound tearing out of his throat like a dying animal. “No!”
He grabbed Dante by the lapels, shaking the dying man. “How much time is on the timer? Dante, tell me how much time!”
Dante’s eyes were glassy, staring up at the chandelier. A cruel, final smile stretched across his bloody face.
“Three minutes,” Dante choked out. “Just enough time… for you to know… you lost.”
Dante’s eyes rolled back, and he exhaled his final, rattling breath.
Roman dropped his uncle’s body and sprinted back up the stairs. The mansion was in absolute chaos. Guests were screaming, rushing toward the exits. The security guards were shouting orders, trying to maintain control.
“Three minutes!” Roman roared over the noise, his eyes locking onto his security chief. “Get the helicopter in the air right now! I need the location of that container!”
“Sir, we don’t have a location!” the chief yelled back. “We don’t know where in Brooklyn it is!”
Serena collapsed onto the floor, wailing uncontrollably. “My baby! Leo!”
I stood frozen near the dining room doors, my mind racing a million miles an hour. Three minutes. It would take ten minutes just to fly to Brooklyn, let alone find a specific shipping container among thousands at the docks.
It was impossible. The boy was already dead.
Unless.
I looked at Peter Nardi. The dying hitman was still slumped against the wall, watching the chaos with tired, resigned eyes.
I ran over and dropped to my knees beside him.
“Peter,” I begged, grabbing his lapel. “You worked for Marcus Vale. You know how they operate. Where would they hide a container at the Brooklyn docks? Where?”
Peter coughed, a thin stream of blood running down his chin. “It’s useless, kid. Dante set the charge. It’s over.”
“No!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “There has to be a failsafe! Dante was a coward! A coward doesn’t rig a bomb without a way to stop it in case he gets trapped! How do we stop it?”
Peter looked at me, a flicker of respect in his fading eyes.
“The signal,” Peter wheezed. “The remote transmits a radio frequency to the receiver on the C4. If you jam the frequency… the signal never reaches the bomb.”
“Jam it how?” Roman demanded, dropping to his knees beside us. He had heard everything. “We don’t have a signal jammer!”
“Yes, you do,” my father said.
Thomas Dawson walked slowly toward us, his white cane tapping against the marble.
“Dad?” I asked.
“The subterranean vault,” my father said, pointing his cane toward the floor. “Twenty-four years ago, Dante installed a military-grade signal jammer in the vault to prevent anyone from remotely hacking the electronic safes. If you turn it on, it will blanket the entire estate in dead air. The remote’s signal won’t be able to leave this property.”
Roman’s eyes widened in realization. “The signal travels at the speed of light. If Dante pressed it a minute ago, the bomb is already counting down.”
“But it needs a continuous signal to verify the detonation command at zero,” Peter coughed out. “Jam the signal before the clock hits zero… the bomb defaults to safe mode.”
“How much time?” Roman asked.
I looked at my watch. “One minute and forty seconds.”
Roman grabbed the heavy gold vault key from the floor where Dante had dropped it.
“I’m going down,” Roman said.
“I’m coming with you,” I said, grabbing his arm.
“No, Claire, it’s too dangerous—”
“I know the breaker panel in the vault, Roman! I clean it every week! I know exactly where the jammer switch is!” I yelled.
Roman didn’t argue. He grabbed my hand and we sprinted toward the private elevator hidden behind the grand staircase.
He shoved the gold key into the panel, and the doors slid open. We practically fell inside as the elevator plummeted into the earth beneath the mansion.
“Fifty seconds,” Roman breathed, staring at the digital floor indicator.
The doors opened to absolute darkness.
“The lights are on a separate breaker,” I said, rushing into the pitch-black concrete room. “Use your phone!”
Roman turned on his flashlight, the beam cutting through the darkness, illuminating stacks of gold bullion and metal lockboxes.
“The breaker is on the far wall!” I shouted, running past a table covered in ledger books.
We reached the heavy steel electrical panel. Roman ripped the door open.
Inside were dozens of unmarked black switches.
“Which one?” Roman panicked. “Claire, which one is it?”
“Thirty seconds!” I cried, scanning the panel. My mind flashed back to the day the head of maintenance had warned me not to touch a specific switch because it would kill the mansion’s wifi.
“It’s the red one!” I yelled, pointing to a small switch hidden at the bottom right corner.
Roman slammed his hand against the red switch, flipping it upward.
A loud, low-frequency hum instantly filled the concrete vault. Roman’s phone screen flickered, the cell service bars instantly dropping to zero. No signal.
We stood in the cold, damp vault, breathing heavily, entirely completely isolated from the world above.
“Ten seconds,” Roman whispered, staring at his watch.
I grabbed his hand. He laced his fingers through mine, squeezing so hard it hurt.
We counted down in silence.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
We waited.
If it didn’t work, a seven-year-old boy had just died alone in the dark.
A minute passed. Then two.
Roman let out a ragged breath, leaning his forehead against the cold metal of the breaker box. “He’s safe. He has to be safe.”
I wrapped my arms around Roman’s waist, hugging him tight. He turned around and pulled me into his chest, burying his face in my hair, trembling.
We stayed like that for a long time, the low hum of the jammer the only sound in the vault.
Suddenly, Roman’s flashlight beam caught something on the table behind us.
It was a small, ancient leather ledger. But it had been forced open, and sticking out from the pages was a piece of fabric.
Roman pulled away from me, his brow furrowing. He walked over to the table and pulled the fabric out.
It was a tiny, hand-stitched baby blanket.
I gasped.
“Claire?” Roman asked, turning to me. “What is it?”
May you like
I stared at the blanket, my blood turning to ice.
“That’s my blanket,” I whispered. “My father made it for me the day I was born.”
