Chapter 14 - The Halon Cloud
A sharp, metallic hiss, like a thousand pressurized steam valves opening simultaneously, erupted through the library ceiling vents.
From the baseboards and the crown molding, thick white plumes of compressed halon gas roared into the room with deafening intensity.
Within three seconds, the grand library was transformed into an impenetrable white fog.
The halon immediately displaced eighty percent of the oxygen, dropping the atmospheric pressure and chilling the room by thirty degrees in an instant.
Shouts of panic and hacking, suffocating coughs exploded from Carlo Romano’s men inside the room.
“What is this?”
“I can't see!”
“My eyes! I can't breathe!”
CLICK.
The main electrical breaker tripped.
Every light in the east wing died simultaneously, plunging the swirling cloud of white gas into pitch-black obscurity.
Matteo dropped his carbine’s thermal scope over his right eye.
To him, the freezing fog was completely transparent; the men inside the room glowed as bright orange and yellow heat signatures against the cold blue background of the walls.
Matteo moved through the double doors like a wraith.
Thwip. Thwip.
His suppressed weapon fired twice.
The guard standing by the left window dropped instantly, his weapon clattering harmlessly against the wainscoting.
Thwip. Thwip.
The second guard near the door collapsed backward into a stack of leather-bound encyclopedias, incapacitated before his nervous system could even register the breach.
I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth, staying low to the floorboards where the heavier ambient air had not yet been completely displaced by the rising halon gas.
I crawled on my hands and knees into the library, clutching the chemical ledger against my belly.
Through the dense white mist, I saw the silhouette of the high-backed chair.
My father was thrashing against the nylon straps, his chest heaving violently as his damaged, asthmatic lungs fought for oxygen in the suffocating cloud.
His lips were already turning a dangerous, dusky blue.
“Dad!” I choked out, my own lungs screaming with the bitter, chemical taste of the dry gas.
Beside the chair, Carlo Romano was on his hands and knees, clutching his throat, his expensive cane rolling across the rug.
He was coughing violently, his snub-nosed revolver wavering in his trembling hand as he tried to aim blindly into the swirling white smoke.
“Matteo!” Carlo wheezed, his voice reduced to a pathetic, raspy squeak.
“You... you insolent dog!”
Matteo materialized out of the fog directly in front of his uncle.
He didn't fire a bullet.
He kicked the revolver out of Carlo’s grip with the toe of his combat boot, sending the weapon spinning into the unlit fireplace hearth.
Then, Matteo’s gloved hand shot out, wrapping around Carlo’s throat, lifting the sixty-two-year-old man six inches off the floor and slamming him hard against the oak mantle.
“You wanted the throne, Uncle,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a freezing, terrifying murmur through the gas.
“Now breathe it in.”
“Breathe in the same suffocation you gave my father.”
Carlo clawed frantically at Matteo’s iron grip, his legs kicking uselessly in the air, his face turning dark purple as his oxygen-deprived brain began to shut down.
I didn't watch him die.
I lunged toward my father’s chair, pulling the small medical shears from the trauma kit attached to Matteo’s discarded vest.
I slashed through the thick yellow cargo straps with frantic, sawing motions.
The straps gave way.
My father slumped forward into my arms, his body heavy, his skin cold and clammy with sweat.
“Claire...” he rasped, his voice barely a breath.
“Can't... can't get air...”
“I have you, Dad!” I screamed through my shirt.
“Leo! Open the exhaust vents!”
Suddenly, the massive industrial exhaust fans on the library’s exterior wall roared to life with a high-pitched whine.
The heavy plate-glass terrace windows were kicked inward with a tremendous crash of breaking glass.
Silas and his rooftop team dropped into the room, their boots crunching on the glass, using tactical axes to shatter the remaining window panes.
The freezing autumn wind rushed into the room, sweeping the white halon cloud out into the night like an evaporating ghost.
Fresh, cold, oxygen-rich air flooded my lungs.
I pulled a pocket CPR mask from my uniform pocket, pressing the silicone seal over my father’s nose and mouth.
I gave two deep, rhythmic rescue breaths, watching his broad chest rise and fall under the flannel fabric.
“Come on, Dad,” I sobbed, pressing my thumbs against his carotid artery, feeling the weak, thumping pulse fight its way back to life.
“Breathe for me!”
My father gasped—a deep, ragged, miraculous draft of cold lake air that rattled through his bronchial tubes.
He coughed violently, vomiting a thin string of bile onto the carpet, his eyes fluttering open as he looked up into my tear-streaked face.
“Claire...” he wheezed, his rough, scarred hand reaching up to touch my hair.
“You... you came back.”
“I will always come back for you, Dad,” I cried, burying my face into his chest, clutching his trembling shoulders as if I could hold him together with my own strength.
Behind us, a heavy click echoed through the wreckage of the library.
The auxiliary lights flickered back on.
The room was a landscape of devastation: shattered glass, shredded curtains, two dead enforcers lying on the Persian rug, and the smell of ozone and halon hanging in the cold draft.
Matteo was still holding Carlo by the throat against the mantle.
Carlo was on his knees now, weeping, his fine camel-hair coat torn and covered in soot, his aristocratic dignity completely pulverized.
At the library entrance, the heavy walnut double doors swung wide open.
Donna Carmela Romano sat in her wheelchair, her silver hair perfectly combed, wearing a dark wool shawl over her shoulders.
Behind her, pushing the chair with quiet, steady pride, was my brother Leo.
In Donna Carmela’s lap rested a vintage, pearl-handled .32 semi-automatic pistol—the personal sidearm of her late husband, Salvatore Romano.
The matriarch looked at her brother-in-law where he knelt in the dirt and shattered glass.
Her eyes were not filled with tears.
They were filled with the cold, ancient judgment of a woman who had buried three brothers, a husband, and a kingdom, and had survived them all.
“Carlo,” Donna Carmela said softly.
Her voice cut through the silent library with the weight of an iron bell.
Carlo looked up, his face contorted in pathetic, sniveling terror.
“Carmela... please,” Carlo begged, holding up his trembling, manicured hands.
“It was the Vales!”
“Vincent threatened my children!”
“They were going to ruin our family’s banks!”
“I did it to protect the name!”
“Do not speak the Romano name with your filthy, traitorous mouth,” Donna Carmela replied, her voice dropping into a register of absolute finality.
She lifted the pearl-handled pistol from her lap, resting her frail forearm along the armrest of her wheelchair, leveling the barrel directly at Carlo’s chest.
“Salvatore left a letter in our safety deposit box at the Continental Bank forty years ago,” the old woman said, her finger resting lightly against the trigger.
“He wrote that if the house ever caught fire from the inside, the mother must put out the flame before the sons burn their souls.”
Matteo slowly stepped back, releasing his grip on his uncle’s collar, bowing his head in silent deference to his mother’s authority.
Carlo stared down the small black bore of his late brother’s gun.
“Carmela... we grew up together in Calabria,” Carlo whimpered, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks.
“We are blood.”
“Blood that betrays blood is not family, Carlo,” Donna Carmela said quietly.
“It is merely poison.”
She pulled the trigger once.
May you like
A sharp, definitive crack echoed through the ruined library.
Carlo Romano slumped sideways against the oak base of the mantle, his hand twitching once against the cold brass of the fireplace fender, before his eyes rolled back and settled into the empty stare of eternity.
