## Chapter Eleven: Forty-Six Minutes
Victor could see them.
Naomi located three hidden cameras, but disabling them risked triggering the bomb.
Julian looked toward the speaker.
“What do you want?”
“I want the Celeste Trust dissolved.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Then two hundred people die.”
Naomi typed a message to Detective Cruz on her phone.
EVACUATE QUIETLY. NO ALARMS.
Cruz ordered floor supervisors to begin moving employees under the pretense of a gas leak drill.
Victor laughed through the speaker.
“Naomi is efficient. Your father would have liked her.”
“How do we stop the device?”
“You don’t.”
“Then why call?”
“I wanted you to understand what Thomas protected instead of his family.”
Julian looked at the cabinets.
“My father protected evidence that could destroy you.”
“Thomas stole leverage belonging to men far more powerful than either of us.”
“And you spent twenty-two years trying to recover it.”
“I spent twenty-two years surviving.”
“By imprisoning my parents.”
“By keeping them useful.”
Julian’s hands curled.
Naomi touched his arm and pointed to a wire running beneath the floor.
The bomb was linked to the building’s fire suppression system. If sprinklers activated, the pressure change could trigger detonation.
Victor had anticipated a normal evacuation response.
“Where are you?” Julian asked.
“Close enough.”
“Too afraid to enter the building yourself?”
“I entered it this morning.”
Naomi looked toward the ceiling camera.
Victor continued.
“I stood in your father’s old office. I remembered the day he accused me of stealing from him.”
“You were stealing.”
“I was building something he lacked the courage to understand.”
“You murdered Celeste because she understood it.”
Victor’s voice became colder.
“Celeste belonged to me.”
“No one belonged to you.”
A brief silence followed.
“Bianca sounds like you now,” Victor said. “That will not save her.”
Julian looked at Naomi.
“Where is she?”
“Ask the people transporting her.”
Julian immediately called Detective Cruz.
Bianca was being moved from the detention center to federal court for a sealed hearing.
The transport vehicle had stopped responding eight minutes earlier.
Cruz dispatched officers.
The timer showed thirty-eight minutes.
Naomi examined the device without touching it.
“There are two triggers,” she whispered. “Timer and remote.”
“Can you block the signal?”
“Possibly. But the remote may detonate if it loses connection.”
Victor spoke again.
“Julian, open the red cabinet.”
Naomi shook her head.
“What’s inside?” Julian asked.
“The reason your mother chose the company over Thomas.”
Martha had arrived outside the building despite orders to remain at the hospital. She listened through Julian’s phone from the command vehicle.
“Don’t open it,” she said.
Victor heard her.
“Martha. Still giving orders.”
“Where is Bianca?”
“She is repeating your mistakes.”
“What mistakes?”
“Trusting the Hales.”
Martha’s voice remained steady.
“Victor, you lost.”
“I have not begun.”
“You lost Celeste the moment she stopped fearing you.”
The speaker crackled.
Julian recognized the silence of wounded pride.
Martha continued.
“You lost Bianca beside the pool. You lost Thomas when he kept the archive from you. You lost because everyone you controlled eventually understood that you were smaller than their fear.”
The timer changed from thirty-two minutes to ten.
Naomi looked up.
“He accelerated it.”
Victor laughed.
“Open the red cabinet.”
Julian moved toward it.
Naomi blocked him.
“It could trigger the device.”
“He wants something inside.”
“He wants you dead.”
“He could detonate now.”
Naomi knew he was right.
Julian placed his hand on the cabinet latch.
“Wait,” Martha said through the phone.
“What?”
“The red cabinet was Thomas’s emergency archive.”
“How do you know?”
“I helped install it.”
“Does it have a secondary release?”
“Beneath the third floor tile from the east wall.”
Naomi located the tile.
Under it was a mechanical cable.
She pulled it carefully.
The cabinet door opened without movement near the bomb.
Inside were old photographs and a sealed envelope.
Julian recognized Thomas’s handwriting.
FOR MARTHA—IF I FAIL.
He opened it.
Martha,
If you are reading this, Victor has found the archive. The explosive device he designed depends on his private radio frequency. I replaced the receiver during construction. The true shutdown phrase is the name Celeste chose for Bianca before Victor changed it.
Julian looked at Martha through the video call.
“What name?”
Martha closed her eyes.
“Grace.”
Julian faced the speaker.
“Grace.”
Nothing happened.
The timer showed eight minutes.
“Again,” Naomi said.
“Grace Laurent.”
The timer stopped.
A green light appeared.
Naomi began disconnecting the detonator.
Victor’s voice erupted through the speaker.
“No!”
The connection ended.
The bomb squad entered after Naomi secured the remote trigger. Employees were cleared from the surrounding blocks.
The archive survived.
But Bianca remained missing.
Police found the transport vehicle beneath an overpass. Two officers were unconscious but alive. Bianca’s restraints had been cut from outside.
A traffic camera showed her entering a dark SUV.
The driver was Lauren Ross.
Daniel stared at the image.
“She helped Victor again.”
Naomi enlarged the frame.
“Look at Bianca’s hand.”
Bianca held two fingers against the window.
Daniel recognized the gesture.
A childhood signal he and Lauren used when they were being watched.
Lauren was not helping Victor willingly.
She was leading police.
The SUV’s route ended near an abandoned rail yard.
Tactical teams surrounded a warehouse.
Inside, they found Lauren injured near the entrance. Bianca and Victor were gone.
Lauren gave Julian an address before paramedics treated her.
“The old courthouse,” she said.
The building had been closed for renovation.
Victor had forced Lauren to intercept the transport. She deliberately drove past traffic cameras and left Bianca’s trail.
“Why the courthouse?” Julian asked.
“He said the story began there.”
Celeste had filed an emergency custody petition against Victor the morning before her car crash.
The hearing was supposed to occur at that courthouse.
She never reached it.
Julian, Naomi, and federal agents entered through the underground garage.
They found Bianca in the original family courtroom.
She sat in the witness chair.
Victor stood behind her with a gun against her neck.
The judge’s bench was covered with Celeste’s old court documents.
“You froze the accounts,” Victor said.
Bianca’s voice remained calm.
“Yes.”
“You chose them over me.”
“I chose the truth.”
“I gave you everything.”
“You gave me your hatred.”
Victor pressed the gun harder against her skin.
Julian stepped into the doorway.
“Let her go.”
Victor smiled.
“You keep rescuing women who betrayed you.”
“Bianca will answer for what she did.”
“She will die for it.”
“No,” Bianca said. “You will.”
Victor looked down at her.
Bianca struck his injured shoulder.
The gun fired.
Naomi shot Victor’s arm.
Bianca fell from the chair while Julian rushed forward.
Victor escaped through the judge’s private door.
The bullet had grazed Bianca’s side.
As paramedics treated her, she grabbed Julian’s sleeve.
“He said he was going home.”
“Where?”
“He called the mansion his home.”
Julian understood.
Victor was going back to the place where Bianca had nearly killed Martha.
The infinity pool.
Martha was still in the command vehicle outside the Hale tower.
Julian called her.
No answer.
Naomi contacted the officer assigned to protect her.
His radio lay abandoned inside the vehicle.
Martha was gone.
On the seat, someone had left a single rare red rose.
May you like
A note was tied around its stem.
BRING THOMAS TO THE POOL.
