Chapter 3 - Veins of Salt and Silver
Julian Rossi felt the eyes of two hundred people fall upon him like a physical blow. The blood drained from his face, leaving his skin the color of damp chalk.
“Alessandro—Don Moretti,” Julian stammered, raising his hands, his knuckles white. “This is a mistake. I—I’ve been near the bar all night. Ask the bartender! Ask anyone!”
“The bar is twenty feet from the service hallway entrance, Julian,” Marco said, his voice grating like iron on stone as he stepped around Alessandro. Marco’s hand rested casually inside his coat jacket. “And you’ve slipped away twice tonight to 'make private calls regarding your uncle’s health.'”
“No! I was calling my girlfriend!” Julian’s voice cracked into a desperate shriek. “I swear on my mother’s grave! I didn't touch any cake! I don't even like sweet things!”
Alessandro raised a single hand. Marco stopped.
“Gabriel,” Alessandro commanded softly. “Disarm it.”
Gabriel produced a thin, surgical kit from his inner pocket. His hands were completely steady as he reached toward the second tier of the cake. With infinite care, he sliced open the thick layer of white fondant with a scalpel, exposing the interior.
Instead of moist sponge and chocolate ganache, the center of the cake contained a hollowed-out block of dense plastic foam. Resting inside that foam was a military-grade C4 block, smaller than a paperback book, attached to a micro-receiver and a digital timer counting down.
The numbers on the red LED screen were glowing brightly:
03:42 03:41 03:40
A quiet gasp rippled through the front row of guests.
“Three minutes,” Gabriel reported, his voice devoid of emotion. “It’s a dual-trigger system. It had a remote receiver, but it also has a hard counter set to detonate automatically at 9:15 PM. Whoever planted this set a backup to ensure it went off even if the cellular signal in this marble basement was blocked.”
“Can you snip it?” Alessandro asked.
“It’s anti-tamper,” Gabriel replied smoothly, pulling a pair of non-conductive ceramic tweezers from his kit. “If I cut the ground wire without bridging the capacitor, the circuit completes instantly. Give me sixty seconds.”
The room was so quiet that the faint click-click-click of Gabriel’s tools was audible over the ambient hum of the air conditioning. Sweat beaded on the back of Gabriel’s neck, but his fingers did not twitch. He inserted a copper bridge, clipped a tiny green wire, and the red LED display abruptly went dark.
02:14 held frozen on the screen.
A low, collective sigh of relief washed through the room, but Alessandro’s face remained stone.
“The bomb is dead,” Alessandro said, turning back to Julian. “Now, let us speak about the living.”
“I didn't do it!” Julian wept, dropping to his knees. “Please, Don Moretti! My family has been loyal to you! My uncle loves Ethan!”
“Your uncle is an old man who sleeps eighteen hours a day,” Alessandro said coldly, walking slowly toward Julian. The crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. “You, however, have accumulated three million dollars in gambling debts in Atlantic City over the last six months. I know about your debts, Julian. I was waiting for you to come to me like a man to ask for a loan. Instead, it seems someone else offered to pay your debts in exchange for a favor.”
Julian trembled on the marble floor. “They... they told me it was just a listening device! They told me it was a bug to hear your conversations with the Mayor! I didn't know it was a bomb! I swear to God, I didn't know!”
Alessandro stopped three feet from the kneeling young man. He looked down at him with an expression of profound disgust.
“You brought an explosive into my house,” Alessandro said quietly. “You placed it three feet from my son. Whether you were stupid or malicious makes no difference to the powder inside that cake.”
Alessandro looked over Julian’s head, pointing his gaze toward the back of the room, near the service doors.
“Julian is a coward,” Alessandro announced to the room. “And a coward does not act alone. He does not have the intelligence to bypass my perimeter security, nor does he have the access required to alter the kitchen delivery schedules. Who gave you the cake, Julian?”
Julian looked up, terror filling his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak—
CRACK.
A single suppressed gunshot rang out from the shadow of the upper balcony overlooking the ballroom.
Julian’s head snapped back. He collapsed onto the marble floor, a single neat hole blooming in the center of his forehead.
Chaos erupted.
May you like
Women screamed. Men threw themselves to the floor. Marco instantly slammed his body over Alessandro, drawing a nickel-plated .45 from his holster, while two guards rushed Ethan into the reinforced panic room behind the main stage.
“Balcony!” Marco roared, pointing his gun upward. “West side! Move!”
