Chapter 7 - Sixty SecondsThe police body-camera footage later lasted fifty-three seconds.
It felt like fifty-three years.
Marcus streamed the tactical unit’s feed to Roman’s study because Cynthia’s rescue operation had already gone wrong before anyone could stop it.
Unit 317 opened.
Cynthia screamed through duct tape.
Officer Ramirez spotted the wires beneath the chair.
“Bomb!”
Everyone moved.
The camera jerked.
A digital timer showed fifty-seven seconds.
Roman stood motionless beside me.
“Can they get her out?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
The bomb technician shouted for everyone to clear the unit.
Cynthia thrashed.
Forty-eight seconds.
One officer ignored the evacuation order.
He ran forward, cut the restraints, lifted Cynthia and dragged her toward the entrance.
Thirty-eight.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-six.
“Move,” I whispered.
The officer stumbled.
Another grabbed Cynthia’s arm.
Twenty-eight.
They crossed the doorway.
Fifteen.
The camera spun toward concrete.
Someone yelled.
Then the screen went white.
The sound punched through the speakers.
I jumped.
Roman pulled me backward instinctively.
Static.
Nothing.
“Marcus?”
He was already calling.
Ten seconds later he exhaled.
“They’re alive.”
My knees weakened.
“Cynthia?”
“Injured. Conscious.”
Roman closed his eyes.
The explosion destroyed Unit 317.
Whatever records had been there were gone.
But Victor had made one mistake.
Cynthia survived.
By midnight, federal investigators were involved.
By morning, Victor Moretti had vanished.
His house was empty.
His passport remained behind.
His private aircraft sat untouched.
Three company vehicles were missing.
And $12 million had moved from an offshore account forty minutes before the explosion.
Roman responded the way Roman responded to fear.
He became work.
He called attorneys.
Board members.
Federal investigators.
Banks.
Security teams.
He froze Victor’s corporate access before breakfast.
By nine, Victor had been removed from every Moretti International account.
By ten, the board suspended him.
By eleven, reporters surrounded the company headquarters.
Roman never raised his voice once.
That was how I knew he was furious.
Cynthia regained consciousness shortly after noon.
She asked for me.
Roman objected.
I went anyway.
The hospital placed her under armed guard.
I walked into her room expecting a monster.
Instead, I found a woman with gray skin, swollen eyes, and burns along one hand.
She looked twenty years older than she had at Bellamy House.
“Nora.”
I remained standing.
“You knew my father.”
“Yes.”
“Did you help kill him?”
She began crying.
“No.”
“You helped Victor.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I changed his work assignments. Gave Victor access to schedules. Told him when Michael met with inspectors.”
She swallowed.
“But I didn’t know Victor planned to kill him.”
“Did you know afterward?”
Her silence answered.
My eyes burned.
“For sixteen years?”
“I was scared.”
“So was my mother.”
Cynthia looked away.
“She spent three years wondering whether she missed some warning sign. Whether she could have saved him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
My voice sharpened.
“You don’t get to spend three words and purchase forgiveness.”
Cynthia nodded.
“You’re right.”
That took some of the anger out of me.
Not enough.
“Tell me everything.”
So she did.
Victor’s fraud had begun before Roman inherited the company.
He substituted cheaper materials on construction projects, bribed inspectors and pocketed the difference.
When failures occurred, he paid employees to alter records.
My father discovered the pattern accidentally.
Vittorio believed him.
Victor discovered their meeting.
“What happened to Dad?” I asked.
Cynthia stared at her blanket.
“Dr. Lang gave Victor access to a compound that could trigger cardiac arrhythmia.”
My stomach turned.
“How?”
“Michael’s thermos.”
I remembered Dad’s silver coffee thermos.
He carried it everywhere.
“Who put it in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who?”
She began shaking.
“Victor made sure everyone knew only enough to do their part.”
“What was your part?”
“After Michael died, I entered his subcontracting office and removed copies of the inspection reports.”
“You robbed a dead man.”
“Yes.”
“Then my father outsmarted you.”
Her eyes flicked toward my watch.
“He always wore that thing.”
“He trusted ordinary objects.”
Cynthia gave a broken smile.
“He said expensive safes make people curious.”
That sounded so much like Dad I almost couldn’t breathe.
Roman stood near the door throughout the interview.
When Cynthia told me about the thermos, his expression changed.
“You know something,” I said.
He stepped forward.
“My father kept one.”
“A thermos?”
“Michael gave him one as a joke after Vittorio complained his coffee was always cold.”
Cynthia’s head snapped toward him.
“What color?”
“Blue.”
She went pale.
“What?”
“Victor took it after Vittorio died.”
Roman froze.
“Why?”
“Because he said it was sentimental.”
My stomach turned.
Two dead men.
Two thermoses.
Two supposed natural accidents.
Except Vittorio’s death was a car crash.
“Maybe your father wasn’t poisoned,” I said.
Cynthia stared at Roman.
“No.”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Victor used the poison on Michael because he needed the death to look natural.”
“Then why sabotage Vittorio’s car?”
“Because Vittorio had stopped using the thermos.”
Roman’s face became unreadable.
The detail was too specific.
Which meant Cynthia had known far more than she admitted.
“You knew,” Roman said.
She began crying again.
“You knew Victor killed my father.”
“I suspected.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
Roman turned away.
I saw something inside him fracture.
His father.
His uncle.
Sixteen years of loyalty built over murder.
I wanted to touch him.
I didn’t.
Not while Cynthia was watching.
Instead, I asked, “Where is Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where would he go?”
“He won’t run.”
Roman turned.
Cynthia swallowed.
“Victor doesn’t think he’s guilty.”
“What?”
“He thinks Moretti International belongs to him.”
“Why?”
“He built much of it beside Vittorio. When your father left control to you, Victor believed he had been cheated.”
Roman laughed once.
Coldly.
“So he killed him?”
“He told himself he was correcting something.”
“And Leo?”
Cynthia looked at me.
“He didn’t order Leo killed.”
“He aimed through him.”
“He ordered you killed because he believed Michael’s evidence would surface through you.”
“And a six-year-old standing in front of me was acceptable?”
Her eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
Roman’s voice became deadly.
“Then don’t tell me he spared my son.”
Nobody spoke.
Cynthia reached for a water cup.
Her injured hand shook.
Then she whispered, “There’s one place.”
“What place?”
“The old Moretti plant.”
Roman frowned.
“The Joliet facility?”
“Vittorio closed it twenty years ago.”
“Victor reopened part of it through a shell company.”
Marcus, standing outside, immediately began typing.
“What does he keep there?”
Cynthia looked frightened.
“Insurance.”
Within an hour, investigators surrounded the abandoned manufacturing plant.
Victor was not there.
But his “insurance” was.
Files.
Thousands of them.
Photographs.
Bank records.
Recordings.
Bribery ledgers.
Copies of private emails.
Material capable of ruining executives, inspectors, judges and contractors across four states.
Victor had spent decades collecting leverage.
Then investigators found a locked cabinet.
Inside were two objects.
My father’s silver thermos.
And Vittorio Moretti’s blue one.
Roman stared at the evidence photograph for a long time.
We finally had him.
Or we thought we did.
At four that afternoon, Roman received a call.
Not from Victor.
From Leo’s school.
Except Leo had not gone to school.
He was inside the Moretti estate.
Protected by twelve guards.
Roman answered.
“Mr. Moretti?”
A woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“We received instructions from you authorizing Leo’s pickup.”
Roman went completely still.
“What?”
“A driver arrived with signed authorization and identification.”
My blood froze.
Roman shouted for security.
Feet thundered through the estate.
Elena appeared upstairs.
Alone.
“Where is Leo?” Roman demanded.
Her face went white.
“He was in the garden with Daniel.”
Daniel.
One of Roman’s oldest security employees.
The man had worked for the family for nineteen years.
Marcus checked his phone.
“Daniel’s tracker is offline.”
Roman’s entire body went rigid.
Then his phone buzzed.
A photograph arrived.
Leo.
Sitting in the back seat of a car.
Terrified.
Beside him was Victor Moretti.
Silver-haired.
Smiling.
Below the photo:
Bring Michael Blake’s watch and Vittorio’s letter.
Nora comes alone.
Or this family loses another son.
Roman looked at me.
“No.”
I had not said anything.
He already knew.
“No.”
I looked at Leo’s photograph.
“He wants me.”
“He wants the evidence.”
“He wants both.”
“You’re not going.”
“Roman.”
“No.”
His voice broke.
“If I send you, what does that make me?”
“A father.”
“It makes me a man trading your life for his child.”
“Then don’t trade.”
I took his hand.
“We get Leo back.”
He stared at me.
“How?”
I looked at Marcus.
“Victor thinks he knows everything.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“So?”
“So we give him the one thing men like Victor never expect.”
“What?”
I slipped my father’s watch from my wrist.
May you like
“A lie better than his.”
And for the next three hours, we built one.
