Chapter 11 - WHEN THE HOUSE WENT DARK
We never reached the warehouse.
At 6:18 P.M., the mansion lost power.
Every light went out at once.
Emergency generators should have started within seven seconds.
They didn't.
I stood in the foyer.
“That isn't a utility failure.”
Dominic was already reaching for his phone.
No signal.
A second later, steel security shutters dropped over the windows.
Somebody had locked the house from inside the control network.
Then I heard it.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Relays.
Dozens of them.
Backup floodlights around the courtyard powered on.
Dominic looked toward the windows.
I grabbed his arm.
“Get away from the glass.”
The lights began flashing.
Fast.
Brutal.
White explosions cut through gaps around the shutters.
Dominic stumbled.
I pulled him into the central hallway.
“No windows. Eyes down.”
His guards were shouting.
Someone tried the security room.
Locked.
Of course.
I ran toward the basement.
Dominic followed.
“What are you doing?”
“Killing the building.”
“The power is already out.”
“Not all of it.”
Someone had isolated the emergency circuits and taken control of them.
I reached the main switchgear.
The emergency bus was live.
I opened the panel.
Dominic stared at hundreds of cables.
“You know what you're looking at?”
“No.”
His face changed.
I glanced at him.
“I'm kidding.”
Even then, he almost laughed.
I found the transfer circuit.
The system had been intentionally bypassed.
I couldn't safely restore everything.
So I did the opposite.
I shut down every exterior lighting circuit manually.
One by one.
The flashing stopped.
Then I restored the generator to essential interior systems.
The mansion came alive.
Dim emergency lighting.
Security computers rebooted.
Doors unlocked.
Dominic was still standing.
No seizure.
We had beaten the trigger before it could fully affect him.
Then one of the guards shouted.
“Tunnel!”
A hidden service entrance beneath the garage had been opened.
Mercer had entered the mansion through an old bootlegging passage nobody had used in decades.
He hadn't come to kill Dominic.
He had come for the contingency file.
But the file wasn't there.
It was already with federal investigators.
Mercer realized that thirty seconds too late.
Security cameras caught him running back into the tunnel.
Dominic started after him.
I grabbed a flashlight.
He looked at me.
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You're staying here.”
“I found the tunnel circuit.”
“And you nearly died yesterday.”
“And you nearly seized five minutes ago.”
We stared at each other.
Then Dominic sighed.
“I don't win arguments with you, do I?”
“Not yet.”
We entered the tunnel together.
Halfway down, I found an old wooden workbench.
On it sat a familiar metal toolbox.
My father's.
And beside it was a small voice recorder.
The red light was blinking.
Someone had turned it on minutes earlier.
We pressed play.
Mercer's voice filled the tunnel.
“Vincent, I'm done cleaning up your mistakes.”
Then another voice answered through a phone speaker.
Vincent.
“You were paid to handle Walter Hodge.”
Dominic and I stared at each other.
Mercer replied:
“I handled him. Just like I handled Anthony.”
May you like
The recording was still running.
Mercer had accidentally left behind a confession to both murders.
