Chapter 5 - Race Against the Clock
Valente’s hand stopped moving inside his jacket. His eyes locked onto the vibrating pocket of the councilman's suit.
"Answer it on speaker," Valente commanded, his voice dropping into a tone that brooks zero argument. "Put it on speaker right now, Arthur, or I swear I'll let Viktor finish what he started before that phone even finishes ringing."
Trembling violently, his fingers clawing clumsily at the fabric, Davis managed to pull his smartphone out of his pocket. With a terrified fumbling swipe of his thumb, he answered the call and hit the speaker button, holding the phone out like it was a venomous snake about to strike.
"Hello?" Davis whimpered into the receiver.
A cold, distorted voice filtered through the phone speaker, muffled by a digital voice-changer.
“ Councilman. We assume the table is clear and the package has been delivered? Our timer is synced to this call. You have exactly ninety seconds to clear the restaurant perimeter before we dial the secondary sequence and close the books on Mr. Carmine once and for all.”
Ruby’s heart slammed against her ribs. Ninety seconds. Ninety seconds before ten pounds of C4 detonated under booth four, vaporizing the office, the dining room, and everyone inside it.
Valente didn't hesitate for a single second. He looked past Davis, straight at Ruby.
"How much time do we actually have to reach the back service alley?" Valente demanded, dropping all pretense of polite conversation.
"Ninety seconds!" Ruby shouted over the electronic hum of the phone. "If we run through the kitchen and out the back loading dock, we might make it past the blast radius—"
"No," Valente interrupted sharply. "The back alley is a dead end bordered by concrete brick walls. If they detonated it remotely from an observation point across the street, the shockwave would bounce off those walls and crush anyone in that alleyway into dust."
"Then where do we go?" Ruby cried, panic threatening to overwhelm her senses. "There's no other way out!"
Valente's dark eyes swept the small office, analyzing the room with the tactical precision of a man who had survived a dozen assassination attempts. His gaze landed on a heavy, industrial-grade steel floor hatch located in the corner behind the oak desk—a vintage storm cellar access door leading down into the building's old stone foundation and subterranean utility tunnels.
"Viktor! Lift that hatch!" Valente ordered sharply.
The massive bodyguard holstered his gun, lunged across the room, and grabbed the heavy iron ring on the floor hatch. With a mighty heave of his muscular shoulders, he yanked the rusted steel doors upward, revealing a dark, yawning stone staircase plunging deep into the subterranean underbelly of the historic building.
"Move! All of you, down the stairs right now!" Valente commanded.
Davis tried to scramble toward the cellar opening on his hands and knees, sobbing uncontrollably, but his legs tangled in his trousers and he collapsed hard against the stone floor.
"I can't! My legs won't work—please, Vince, don't leave me!" Davis wailed, reaching out a desperate hand toward Valente.
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Valente looked down at the pathetic, sweating politician who had just tried to orchestrate his murder. For a fraction of a second, a cold calculation passed through Valente's eyes. Then, with a harsh sigh, he reached down, grabbed Davis by the scruff of his expensive silk shirt, and hauled him up like a sack of laundry.
"Get down there, Arthur. You're going to live to face a much longer sentence than a bomb," Valente growled, shoving the councilman headfirst down the dark stone steps.
