Chapter 2 - SEVEN MINUTES OF STATIC
The iron security doors of the surveillance annex slammed shut with the finality of a prison cell.
Jack Romano pushed the heavy deadbolt into place, shutting out the muted panic of the banquet hall.
Hannah stood shivering against the edge of a computer console, holding a white cloth Jack had tossed her against her bleeding arm.
The room was illuminated solely by forty-eight flickering monitors displaying every angle of the five-acre estate.
“Sit down,” Jack commanded without looking at her.
Hannah remained standing, her jaw clenched tight.
“I am not a prisoner, Mr. Romano.”
Jack spun around, his towering frame casting a long shadow across the bank of screens.
“Right now, you are the only person in this house I haven’t put a bullet into for treason.”
“That doesn’t make you my protector.”
“It makes me the only reason you are still drawing breath.”
Jack pulled a metal stool out and shoved it behind her knees until she sat down.
He leaned over the primary terminal, his tattooed fingers flying across the backlit mechanical keyboard.
The screens flickered as he bypassed the household security chief’s administrative clearance.
“Whoever wiped the footage didn’t use a remote virus,” Jack muttered, reading lines of raw system code.
“How do you know that?”
“Because server cluster four is entirely air-gapped from the public internet.”
He hit a keystroke, bringing up an empty black window with a flashing green cursor.
“Someone stood directly in this room at eight-forty-one in the evening.”
Hannah watched the blinking cursor, feeling the weight of the mansion pressing down upon them.
“That was right when I was called up to the kitchen to prepare the dessert trays.”
“Exactly,” Jack said, pulling up the staff duty roster on an adjacent display.
“Ms. Clarke assigned you to that specific cart at eight-thirty-five.”
Hannah closed her eyes, remembering the cold touch of the head housekeeper’s hand directing her down the hallway.
“She told me Don Henry requested the blood-orange soufflés early.”
“My grandfather hasn’t eaten citrus in a decade because of his heart medication,” Jack replied dryly.
Hannah opened her eyes, a sharp ache settling behind her temples.
“She set me up from the start.”
“Clarke is a pawn,” Jack stated flatly, his eyes scanning the server access logs.
“She doesn’t have the technical expertise to erase root partition logs without leaving a ghost trail.”
Jack pulled a magnifying glass from a desk drawer and examined the physical key he had extracted from the watch.
“Tell me about your father’s death, Hannah.”
The question made her chest tighten with six years of unhealed grief.
“The police report said it was an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring in his basement.”
“Did you see his body?”
Hannah flinched, looking away at the rain-streaked monitors.
“It was a closed casket.”
“Of course it was,” Jack whispered, his tone devoid of surprise.
“What does that mean?”
Jack set the brass micro-key on the console between them.
“It means your father was far too intelligent to die in an accidental fire he designed his own shop to prevent.”
Hannah stared at the tiny piece of brass gleaming under the monitor glow.
“My father was an honest man who barely made enough to pay our rent.”
Jack scoffed, though there was no malice in the sound.
“Thomas Brooks was a legend in the black market before you were even conceived.”
“You’re lying to protect your family’s crimes.”
Jack stepped closer, his dark eyes locking onto hers with terrifying sincerity.
“When I was fourteen years old, a rival crew car-bombed my parents outside our winter villa.”
Hannah stopped breathing, listening to the dark cadence of his voice.
“I was locked inside the subterranean safe room while the villa burned to the ground.”
“The automated fire doors malfunctioned, sealing me inside a concrete oven.”
“It was your father who broke through four feet of reinforced steel with a hand drill to drag me out.”
Hannah looked at the brutal, scarred heir of the city’s most dangerous family.
She had never imagined this man had ever been a helpless boy trapped in the dark.
“He never told me,” she whispered.
“He couldn’t tell you,” Jack replied, his voice softening by a fraction.
“My grandfather paid him half a million dollars to disappear and build the Iron Archive.”
“Then why did he stay in the city?”
“Because someone told him that if he tried to leave the state, you would die before you finished middle school.”
Hannah felt a suffocating nausea rise from the pit of her stomach.
Her quiet, ordinary childhood had been purchased with a gun held to her father’s spine.
“Who threatened him?”
“That is what was locked inside the Archive six years ago,” Jack said.
He tapped a key, bringing up the architectural schematics of the mansion’s sub-levels.
The blueprint showed a labyrinth of old stone cellars leading to a massive vault door marked with a dual-locking icon.
“Look here,” Jack pointed to a red indicator blinking near the vault’s outer threshold.
Hannah leaned in, reading the small digital readout beside the icon.
“Lock One: Disengaged at 8:44 PM.”
Hannah gasped, her fingers digging into the fabric of the stool.
“That was during the seven missing minutes.”
“Whoever stole the watch didn’t need the micro-key to start the sequence,” Jack said.
“They needed the first lock open so they could wait for the right moment to trigger the second.”
A sudden metallic thump rattled the heavy iron door of the surveillance annex.
Jack drew a suppressed pistol from beneath his jacket in a single fluid motion.
He shifted his body, placing himself directly between Hannah and the entrance.
“Who is at the door?” Jack called out, his finger resting along the trigger guard.
May you like
“It is your grandfather, Jack,” came Henry’s raspy voice through the intercom speaker.
“And we have a catastrophic problem in the east gallery.”
