Chapter 15 - THE NIGHT THE HOUSE WENT DARK|
The lights failed at 9:43 p.m.
One moment, the estate glowed with chandeliers and polished marble. The next, the ballroom vanished into darkness, leaving only the faint emergency lights along the walls.
Guests screamed.
Glasses shattered.
A gunshot cracked from the upper floor.
Marcos grabbed Nadia’s wrist and pulled her behind a stone column.
“Stay down.”
“I know how to stay down.”
“Then prove it.”
Another shot sounded.
A man rushed past the doorway, colliding with a waiter and sending a tray of champagne flutes crashing across the floor. Marcos drew his weapon but held his fire.
He did not know who was moving through the dark.
That was the point.
The confusion gave someone a chance to escape with the evidence—or destroy it.
“Nadia, the recorder.”
She checked her pocket.
“It’s gone.”
“What?”
“My pocket’s been cut.”
Marcos swore under his breath.
Across the ballroom, emergency lights flickered on. A thin column of smoke rose from the corridor leading to the private archive.
“Your father’s papers,” Nadia said.
Marcos started toward the corridor.
She caught his sleeve.
“It’s a trap.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Because there may be people inside.”
He pulled free and ran.
Nadia followed.
They reached the archive as smoke filled the hallway. A guard lay unconscious beside the door. Marcos dragged him away while Nadia grabbed a fire extinguisher and forced the flames back from a cabinet.
Inside the room, the curtains were burning.
The old photograph of Marcos’s father had disappeared.
So had the digital recorder.
“They knew what we were looking for,” Nadia said.
Marcos searched the desk.
A small metal box remained beneath the papers. He opened it and found a flash drive wrapped in cloth.
“My father left a second copy,” he said.
Before Nadia could answer, a man stepped from the smoke.
Victor Hale.
His face was bruised, and one sleeve of his jacket was burned.
“Give me the drive,” he said.
Marcos raised his weapon.
“Not another step.”
Victor stopped.
“You don’t understand. Rafael has the original ledger. This is the only copy he hasn’t found.”
“Then why should I give it to you?”
“Because I’m the only person who knows where the rest of it is.”
Nadia watched him.
“Why did you authorize the payments?”
Victor swallowed.
“Rafael threatened my daughter. He showed me photographs of her school, her house, her friends. He said if I refused, she would disappear.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because the first officer I contacted was already working for him.”
Marcos lowered his weapon slightly.
“Where is your daughter?”
“Safe, for now.”
A heavy crash sounded behind them.
The ceiling above the doorway began to buckle.
Nadia grabbed the metal box.
“Move!”
They ran through the corridor as part of the ceiling collapsed behind them. Marcos pulled Victor through the doorway, and all three stumbled into the garden.
Sirens approached from the road.
Guests poured from the estate.
Isabel stood beneath a stone arch, watching the house burn.
When she saw Marcos, her expression changed.
Not relief.
Not fear.
Fury.
“You ruined everything,” she said.
Marcos looked at the flames.
“No, Isabel.”
May you like
He stepped beside Nadia.
“You just showed everyone what you were willing to burn.”
