Chapter 8 - EIGHT MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
Panic kills people before bombs do.
Grandma knew it.
She climbed onto the stage and grabbed the microphone.
“LISTEN TO ME!”
Her voice exploded through the speakers.
Some people stopped.
“Do not run. Do not push. There are children in this room.”
That helped.
Barely.
Marco shouted instructions to his team.
The twelve devices were connected to the hotel’s electrical system.
If anyone cut the wrong wire, they could trigger everything.
Lucía was tracing signals remotely.
“Seven minutes,” she said.
Vargas grabbed Cortez by the collar.
“Deactivate them.”
Cortez laughed.
“I can’t.”
“Wrong answer.”
“You think I personally build bombs?”
Vargas raised his fist.
Grandma shouted, “Mateo!”
He stopped.
She looked at Cortez.
“Who controls the trigger?”
Cortez smiled.
“Someone loyal.”
Salazar appeared.
His gun was raised.
At Vargas.
My blood turned cold.
“No.”
Marco aimed at him.
“Gabriel?”
Salazar’s expression was empty.
Cortez laughed.
“Did you really think betrayal only happens once?”
Grandma stared at Salazar.
“You.”
He looked at her.
“I’m sorry.”
My chest sank.
He had betrayed her again.
Cortez extended his hand.
“Come here.”
Salazar walked toward him.
People backed away.
I wanted to hate him.
Then I noticed something.
His injured shoulder.
The bandage.
His left hand kept touching it.
Three times.
Pause.
Two times.
Pause.
Grandma saw it too.
Code.
She had taught me simple tapping games when I was little.
Three-two.
DOWN.
Salazar wasn’t warning Cortez.
He was warning us.
Get down.
I grabbed Grandma.
“DOWN!”
Salazar spun and fired.
Not at Vargas.
At the chandelier.
Glass exploded.
People screamed and dropped.
At the same moment, he tackled Cortez.
“NOW!”
Marco’s team surged forward.
Cortez’s guards opened fire.
Chaos.
Vargas pulled me behind the stage.
Lucía shouted through the earpiece.
“Five minutes!”
“Trigger?”
“Mobile transmitter. Somebody in the building has it.”
“Who?”
“I’m tracing.”
Grandma crouched beside us.
“Tomas?”
Nobody had seen him since the gala began.
My stomach tightened.
“No.”
Vargas’s expression changed.
“Tomas knew the electrical system.”
Elena overheard.
“You think my husband is working with Cortez?”
“I think we verify everything.”
Trust is dangerous.
Salazar’s words.
We searched the service corridors.
Four minutes.
A camera monitor showed Tomas entering the basement.
Alone.
We ran.
In the electrical room, we found him beside a control panel.
He held a small device.
Elena stopped.
“Tomas.”
He turned.
His face collapsed.
“No.”
She looked at the device.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to stop it.”
“Give it to me,” Vargas said.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Tomas’s hand trembled.
“Because my heartbeat is connected to the trigger.”
We stared.
“What?”
Cortez had implanted a medical transmitter beneath his skin during captivity.
If Tomas died, or moved too far outside the hotel’s network, the bombs activated.
“And this device?” Marco asked.
“It’s the receiver.”
Lucía listened through the radio.
“I need to see it.”
Marco sent video.
“Three minutes.”
Tomas looked at me.
“Aurelio, go upstairs.”
“No.”
“Please.”
It was the first thing my father had ever asked me.
I stayed.
Lucía began giving instructions.
“Open the casing.”
Tomas did.
“Red board.”
“Yes.”
“Two contacts marked H and R?”
“Yes.”
“If you bridge them—”
The device beeped.
2:00.
Two minutes.
Lucía cursed.
“Secondary countdown.”
Grandma entered.
“What can we do?”
Lucía answered.
“I can fake the heartbeat signal, but somebody has to manually connect the hotel transmitter to a stable pulse source.”
Everyone stared at the panel.
“Where?”
“Main power conduit.”
Marco looked.
“That’s live electricity.”
“Yes.”
“How live?”
“Enough to kill someone.”
Silence.
Vargas stepped forward.
“I’ll do it.”
“No,” Tomas said.
“My hotel, my problem.”
“It isn’t your hotel.”
“You know what I mean.”
Tomas grabbed the cable.
“This started because of me.”
Elena began crying.
“No.”
Tomas looked at her.
“I missed twelve years.”
“You didn’t choose that.”
“I choose this.”
I stepped in front of him.
“No.”
He looked down at me.
“I just found you.”
His face broke.
“So did I.”
The timer showed 1:20.
I held his wrist.
“You don’t get to meet me and die five minutes later.”
Despite everything, he laughed.
“You definitely are my son.”
Grandma suddenly looked toward the wall.
“The water pipes.”
“What?”
“Ground the current through the sprinkler main.”
Marco understood.
“We can divert the charge.”
Lucía shouted.
“Yes! Do that!”
Thirty seconds of frantic movement.
Cable.
Metal clamp.
Pipe.
Tomas connected the transmitter.
The timer reached ten.
Nine.
Eight.
My mother held my hand.
Seven.
Six.
The lights flickered.
Five.
Four.
Lucía yelled, “Signal stable!”
Three.
Two.
The timer stopped.
0:02.
Nobody breathed.
Then it reset.
Safe.
For half a second, the basement remained silent.
Then everyone upstairs began cheering.
We had stopped the bombs.
Vargas hugged Tomas.
Elena hugged both of them.
Grandma hugged me.
But Cortez was gone.
During the chaos, he escaped through a service elevator.
Teresa was gone too.
So was the original cylinder.
“He took the recording,” Marco said.
“Copies exist,” I reminded him.
Lucía confirmed the live broadcast had already spread beyond the city.
Millions of people would see it.
Cortez could no longer bury the truth.
Salazar entered the basement holding his bleeding arm.
“He’s heading for the docks.”
Vargas looked at him.
“How?”
“Private tunnel beneath the hotel.”
“Of course there’s a tunnel.”
Vargas’s voice became cold.
“Where at the docks?”
“Pier Seventeen.”
Tomas stared.
“That was La Corona’s first warehouse.”
Grandma nodded.
“He’s going back to where it started.”
“Why?”
Salazar looked at her.
“Because the rest of the archive is there.”
Cortez had maintained records of bribes and payments for decades.
If he destroyed them, prosecutors would have the recording but lose much of the supporting evidence.
Vargas turned to me.
“This time you stay.”
I opened my mouth.
“No.”
I closed it.
He blinked.
“That easy?”
“I’m tired.”
Everyone almost laughed.
Then Grandma said, “I’m staying with him.”
Elena too.
Vargas, Tomas, Salazar, and Marco left for the docks.
For thirty minutes, we waited.
Then forty.
At 1:18 a.m., my phone rang.
I had never owned a phone before that day.
Marco had given me one.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Cortez.
“Hello, Aurelio.”
My blood chilled.
“Where are they?”
He laughed.
“Your new family?”
“Where?”
“They’re at Pier Seventeen.”
“Are they alive?”
“For the moment.”
Grandma grabbed another phone to alert Marco’s backup.
Cortez continued.
“You’ve caused me a great deal of inconvenience.”
“Good.”
“You sound like Esperanza.”
“Good.”
A pause.
“Would you like to know something she never told you?”
“No.”
“You will.”
His voice became softer.
“The Black Ledger was never the reason I hunted your family.”
I looked at Grandma.
“What?”
“The recording could embarrass me. Prison, perhaps. Governments change. Judges can be bought.”
“Then why?”
“Because Esperanza took something from me twenty years ago.”
“What?”
Grandma’s face suddenly went white.
She knew.
Cortez laughed.
“Ask her who your grandfather really was.”
I looked at Grandma.
“What does he mean?”
She closed her eyes.
Cortez answered for her.
“Your grandfather was my brother.”
I couldn’t speak.
That meant—
Cortez was family.
My great-uncle.
Grandma whispered, “Aurelio…”
Cortez continued.
“And that means the fortune everyone believes belongs to the Cortez family?”
May you like
His voice became ice.
“Legally, Aurelio Mendoza, it belongs to you.”
