Chapter 80 - The Ghost of the Hearth
Jared didn't flinch under the red laser dots dancing across the front of his jacket. "Melissa gave you the layout of the property, didn't she? She’s been feeding you grandfather’s personal effects since the day he was admitted to hospice."
"Of course she did," Graves said, taking a step forward while his mercenaries kept their weapons trained on Jared. "Your sister was so desperate for an ounce of validation, so hungry to look down on you and your pathetic little children from the balcony of a high-rise in Chicago, that she handed me every journal, every blueprint, every deed fragment she could steal from your father's desk drawer. She thought she was my partner. She thought that little stunt at Christmas—forcing Noah and Ellie to crawl for scraps—was proof that she had broken your spirit."
Graves sneered, his eyes flicking toward the humming glass cylinder behind him. "She thought she was showing me strength. But all she proved was that she was a petty, small-minded child who couldn't see the fortune right under her feet. She wanted your repair shop to satisfy a vendetta. I wanted what was pinned beneath it."
"Grandfather knew what you were," Jared said softly, his voice dropping into a register of cold certainty that made the two armed contractors shift their footing uncomfortably. "He knew what Melissa was, too. That's why he never gave my father the override sequence. He knew the greed would pass down like a rot in the marrow."
"He was an old fool with a savior complex!" Graves barked, losing his composure. "And now you're going to walk over to that master console, you're going to enter the seven-digit secondary clearance from his journal, and you're going to release the magnetic seals on that core storage unit. If you don't, my men won't bother shooting you. We'll leave you down here, take the elevator to the surface, drop two satchel charges down the bore shaft, and bury you eight hundred feet below the permafrost."
"You forgot one detail, Graves," Jared said, tilting his head slightly toward the ceiling tracks overhead.
"And what is that?"
"You're in a machine shop."
Before Graves could react, Jared’s left hand struck the master override toggle mounted to the structural pillar at his shoulder—a toggle he had recognized five minutes ago as identical to the heavy pneumatic release on Bay One's overhead crane.
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High above, an industrial gantry block—ten tons of solid counterweight balance used to stabilize the lift shaft—slid free from its mechanical interlock.
The sound that followed was not an explosion. It was the absolute, unyielding roar of falling iron.
