Chapter 11 - The Room Beneath the Courthouse
The old courthouse had been closed for renovation for nearly a decade.
Its grand marble staircase was cracked, the upper windows were boarded, and weeds pushed through the pavement outside. My father had owned a private security contract for the building before it was abandoned.
I had never questioned why.
Now I understood that some of the city's most important secrets had been hidden beneath a building everyone believed empty.
Michael wanted to come with me.
I refused.
"You heard Sloane," I said. "He wants us separated."
"He's using Clara to control you."
"He already has her."
"Which is why I'm coming."
I looked at my brother.
For nine years, he had survived by disappearing. He'd learned to distrust everyone and rely on no one.
I had survived by doing the opposite.
Perhaps we'd both mistaken our methods for strength.
"Michael, if we both enter that building, Sloane wins regardless of what happens. Someone needs to protect Elena and our mother."
He hesitated.
Then he handed me the memory card.
"Everything is on here."
"Where's the backup?"
He stared at me.
"There's no backup."
I almost struck him.
"Michael!"
"I know. I know. It was the only way to keep it out of their hands. If we copied it, they could find every version."
I took the card.
"Then we make sure this one gets out."
Marco handed me a small transmitter.
"Your microphone is connected to the server. If anything happens, we'll have the recording."
"And if the building jams the signal?"
"Then we improvise."
I looked at Clara's photograph on my phone.
Seven years old.
Three names.
Twenty dollars.
A contract written in a child's handwriting.
I slipped the photograph into my pocket and entered the courthouse.
Inside, a narrow hallway led toward the basement. The deeper I went, the stronger the smell of damp concrete became. At the bottom of the staircase, I found a steel door bearing an electronic keypad.
The code was my birthday.
I entered it.
The door opened.
Beyond it stretched a corridor lined with heavy metal doors. Each had a small window and a number.
Some doors were scratched from the inside.
I stopped at the third.
A faded paper label had been taped to the frame.
ANTHONY MORETTI.
My father's name.
I opened the door.
The room held a cot, a desk, and a wall covered in photographs. Every photograph showed a person whose name appeared in the Project Lantern records.
Some were strangers.
Others were politicians, corporate executives, police officers, and people who had disappeared from public life.
In the middle of the wall hung a photograph of my father.
He stood beside a younger Victor Sloane.
Between them was a man whose face was obscured by a black marker.
A voice came from the corridor.
"Touching, isn't it?"
Sloane emerged from a side passage, holding a remote control.
"You've finally discovered your inheritance."
"Where's Clara?"
"Safe."
"Show me."
He tilted the remote.
A monitor came alive on the desk.
Clara sat in a room behind thick glass. A microphone hung above her head. On the opposite side of the glass stood a woman in a gray dress.
My mother.
She looked exhausted but unharmed.
Clara reached for her hand through the glass.
My throat tightened.
"What is this place?"
Sloane walked to the wall.
"Your father called it the archive. Every witness he couldn't bribe, threaten, or buy had a room here. Some stayed for days. Others stayed for years."
"And the person he kept hidden?"
Sloane pressed a button.
A door opened at the far end of the corridor.
A man emerged slowly, leaning on a cane.
His hair was white, his shoulders stooped, and his face seemed vaguely familiar.
I couldn't place him.
Then he spoke.
"Dominic."
My blood froze.
It was my father.
Anthony Moretti.
Alive.
He looked at me with the same hard expression I remembered from childhood.
"You've become a disappointment," he said.
I stared at him, unable to process the sight.
"You died."
"No. Your mother and Michael merely convinced you that I had."
I turned toward Sloane.
"You've been keeping him here?"
"Your father requested it."
My father laughed softly.
"I wanted to see what my sons would become without me."
Something snapped inside me.
"You let me bury Michael. You let us believe Mother was dead. You destroyed lives to protect your business."
Anthony tilted his head.
"And yet you stand here, wearing my name and carrying my empire."
"I didn't know."
"You never wanted to know."
The accusation struck because part of me feared he was right.
My father had taught me to ask one question before every decision.
Will this make us stronger?
He had never taught me to ask whether it would make us better.
Anthony stepped closer.
"Your brother chose weakness. Your mother chose betrayal. And now you're wasting everything I built for a child you barely know."
I looked at the monitor.
Clara was watching us.
She could hear every word.
I removed the handwritten contract from my jacket.
"This child has more courage than every adult in this building."
Anthony's expression hardened.
"Give me the document."
"No."
"Then you'll lose everything."
I folded the contract and returned it to my pocket.
"For the first time in my life, Father, that sounds like a fair price."
Sloane raised his weapon.
But before he could fire, the courthouse alarm erupted.
The monitor flickered.
Clara looked directly into the camera.
Her lips moved.
Three words.
I couldn't hear them.
Then the picture vanished.
Sloane stared at the screen.
"What did she do?"
A second alarm began ringing.
The steel doors throughout the corridor unlocked simultaneously.
From behind them came the sounds of people moving, shouting, and pounding against the walls.
My father went pale.
For the first time, the architect of Project Lantern looked genuinely afraid.
Because he recognized the alarm.
It wasn't a security warning.
It was the emergency release system.
May you like
And only one person had ever been taught how to activate it.
Michael.
