Chapter 16 - The People in the Dark
By the time Elena reached the mainland command post, the sea had turned the color of slate.
Dominic met her outside a room crowded with screens, charts, and people speaking in the clipped, untheatrical language of work that mattered too much for speeches.
He wrapped his arms around her only after she stepped into them.
For several seconds, she rested her forehead against his chest.
Then Shaw appeared at the doorway.
“We're ready to move when the next assessment confirms the approach.”
The rescue did not belong to the Moretti family.
That was the first fact Dominic had to hold still inside himself.
He could supply records. He could identify people, explain old arrangements, and answer questions about authority he had inherited without understanding. He could not make the water calmer by being angrier than everyone else in the room.
Outside, trained crews prepared to reach the maintenance access identified and checked with the Kestrel's captain. The naval team remained responsible for the submarine and the dangerous legacy systems. Nobody treated bullion recovery as more urgent than six people still waiting below.
Rinaldi made one final attempt to reverse that order.
He called from the Carina.
The vessel had been instructed to remain available for inspection. Its movements were being monitored, and its master had been contacted directly. Rinaldi wanted Dominic to believe he still possessed the only route to a safe outcome.
“The facility won't tolerate an improvised intrusion,” he said.
“Then provide your current safety records.”
“You don't understand what your father built.”
“Neither do you, if you think he built it so you could leave workers inside.”
Rinaldi's breath sounded sharply against the microphone.
“I can still secure your family's position.”
Dominic looked at Elena.
She stood beside a table reading the names of the six workers, not the figures in the cargo declaration.
“My family's position is not yours to secure.”
He ended the call and supplied the details to the people receiving them.
While they waited, Elena found a blank sheet and wrote down the questions Paloma had asked. Where Mateo would be taken. Whether she should travel. Who would tell her if the arrangements changed.
Dominic watched her check the answers with the designated contact instead of offering the ones she hoped would be true.
“You're good at this,” he said.
“At waiting?”
“At remembering the person who isn't in the room.”
She looked at him.
“I spent six years being that person.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he took another sheet and wrote the Brookline number at the top. The boys needed an update too.
An hour later, the Carina's captain cooperated with the inspection team. He had been hired to move cargo, not obstruct a rescue or flee maritime authorities. Several members of the crew supplied records that contradicted Rinaldi's claim that all personnel had left the facility.
Rinaldi tried to order the vessel underway.
For the first time in years, a man he paid told him no.
At the offshore structure, Anna Leclerc watched the light above the inner door change.
Not the signal she had spent hours trying to restore through the system Rinaldi controlled.
A separate indication from the team reaching the maintenance access.
She turned toward the five people behind her.
“Wait until they confirm.”
Mateo sat with his injured leg supported, his face gray with fatigue. He had stopped asking about the gold many hours earlier. He wanted to know whether the next door opened toward people who knew they were there.
A voice identified the approaching team.
Anna answered the questions, checked the instructions against what she could actually see, and waited through the slowest minutes of her life.
When the first rescuer appeared, she laughed once, abruptly, then put a hand against the wall.
“Six,” she said. “There are six of us.”
“We know.”
She closed her eyes.
Those two words almost undid her.
At the command post, Elena listened to the updates without demanding a live view of every frightening moment. One worker transferred. Then another. Weather delayed the next movement. The injured man needed additional assistance.
Dominic stood so still his shoulders began to ache.
He thought of the boys beneath the truck's seats. Of telling Leo to command his brothers while he prepared to do something that might kill them all.
He had acted with the choices he saw then.
Now he watched people take time to find choices he would have missed by rushing.
The final update came just after dusk.
All six were clear of the facility.
Alive.
Elena sat down before her knees made the decision for her.
Dominic called Paloma with her beside him. The older woman answered without greeting, as though a polite word might use up the time in which the answer should arrive.
“He's out,” Elena said.
Paloma made a sound neither of them would forget.
Later, they saw Mateo at the assessment center. He was cold, exhausted, in pain, and profoundly annoyed to discover his boots had not survived the journey.
Elena told him what his mother had said.
He laughed until the laugh turned into tears.
Dominic stepped away to give them room.
Shaw found him outside.
“Rinaldi is in custody,” she said. “The cargo records and the facility controls are secured. There's a great deal to untangle.”
“And the boy's authorization?”
“Has authorized nothing.”
He nodded.
For the first time since seeing Lorenzo's name beneath Sophia's, he felt the breath reach the bottom of his lungs.
His phone rang.
Brookline.
He answered to four faces fighting for space on the screen.
Liam wanted to know if the people were home. Lucas asked about the boat. Lorenzo held up the broken toy Dominic had not yet fixed.
Leo waited until the others paused.
“Did you have to be a soldier again?”
Dominic looked back at the building where Elena was speaking with Mateo.
“No,” he said. “I had to let the rescuers do their work.”
May you like
Leo thought about that. Then Lorenzo leaned toward the screen.
“Daddy,” he asked, “do we still have to be princes?”
