Chapter 10: Three Minutes
Malcolm located the control box while Clara knelt beside Eleanor.
The elderly woman was weak but conscious.
“Your father taught you to notice details,” Eleanor whispered.
Clara looked beneath the chair.
Four wires ran into the timer.
Red. Blue. White. Black.
She remembered the old photograph of her father in the archive room. A handwritten note on the back had included four words:
Black lies. White survives.
“Cut the black wire,” Eleanor said.
Malcolm hesitated.
“That could trigger it.”
Clara understood.
Her father’s message had not been a warning about the Blackwood family.
It had been an instruction.
She cut the white wire.
The timer stopped at twelve seconds.
Above them, a distant explosion shook the palace.
Marcus had detonated a smaller charge in the west wing as a diversion.
Smoke poured through the corridors while guests and trustees fled.
When Adrian brought Eleanor into the gardens, federal agents surrounded the estate.
But Marcus and Victoria were gone.
In the council chamber, every legal document had been burned.
The recording on Noah’s drive remained their strongest evidence, but without financial records, Marcus could still claim it had been fabricated.
Eleanor asked Clara to retrieve an old music box from her bedroom.
Inside, Clara found a letter written by her father.
Thomas Bennett had hidden the original trust ledgers in a place Marcus could never access without Eleanor.
The letter ended with one sentence:
The truth sleeps beneath the queen.
Clara looked toward the grand portrait gallery.
At its center hung a massive painting of Queen Victoria.
When Adrian removed the frame, they discovered a steel safe.
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Inside were the missing ledgers.
And a signed document showing that Marcus Blackwood had arranged Thomas Bennett’s death.
