THE MORNING AFTER GRANDPA'S FUNERAL, MY PARENTS CAME TO STEAL HIS HOUSE. THEY NEVER EXPECTED THE MAN WAITING BEHIND HIS STUDY DOOR / Chapter 57 / 118

Chapter 57 - The Fall of the Prodigal

My mother didn't pull a gun. She pulled out a small, military-grade detonator with a single red toggle switch.

"The Syndicate didn't come here just to take the master drive, Arthur," Eleanor said, a cold smile spreading across her pale lips. "They knew there was a fifty percent chance you had prepared a dead-hand. If the extraction failed, my orders were to level the mountain."

"The dam," Arthur breathed, his voice dropping into horror. "The Vance Ridge reservoir."

"Two million tons of water," Eleanor said softly, her thumb resting on the red toggle. "Sitting five hundred feet above the valley floor. If I trigger the charges on the sluice gates, Black Ridge town will be erased in twelve minutes. Three thousand people, Julian. All the little shopkeepers, the deputies, the neighbors you played with as a child. Gone."

"You monstrous bitch," Richard choked out from the floor, staring at his wife. "You put charges on the dam? My investments are in the lower valley!"

"Shut up, Richard," she spat, not taking her eyes off me. "Julian, hand me the obsidian override card. Drop your weapons and let me access the secure uplink terminal in the cellar. I can reverse the broadcast and restore the sovereign database. Do it, or the valley drowns."

The room hung on the edge of a razor. Evelyn’s finger hovered over the trigger, but she knew that even a fatal headshot could cause a dying muscle spasm that would depress the toggle. Arthur stood frozen, his eyes burning with helpless fury.

Everything Arthur had built, everything I had fought for over the last twenty-four hours, hung on the plastic switch beneath my mother’s thumb.

"Julian," Arthur said softly. "Look at the desk."

I glanced at the mahogany desk. Beside the smashed hydraulic ram lay the heavy brass surveyor’s level Arthur had kept on his desk since I was seven years old. The level was lined with solid lead.

My mother saw my eyes shift. "Don't try it, Julian—"

She began to depress the switch.

Richard lunged.

Driven by sheer, blind terror of his financial ruin and primal self-preservation, my father threw his entire weight across the Persian rug, grabbing Eleanor’s ankles. She shrieked, her balance breaking as she pitched forward.