Chapter 11 - THE ASHES OF THE EMPIRE
Ten seconds is an eternity when metal turns to liquid fire.
Adrien didn't run.
He stepped forward.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the original silver key Isabella had carried for ten years.
He didn't put it in the lock.
He tossed it into the open coal chute behind him.
The key disappeared into the black pit with a tiny clink.
"Adrien!" Mercer howled, struggling frantically against the steel clamp holding his wrist.
Adrien grabbed the lapels of Mercer's camel-hair coat.
He hooked his heel behind Mercer's ankle and slammed his forearm into the lock's release lever.
The brass clamp snapped open with a crunch.
Mercer tumbled backward onto the marble floor, his right hand blistered and blackened from the radiant heat.
"Out!" Adrien shouted to Isabella.
He grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the main vault exit.
The thermite ignited.
A blinding pillar of white-hot magnesium fire blasted from the center of Box 001.
The heat hit them like a physical wall, singeing their hair and scorching the wool of their clothes.
Three thousand degrees of chemical flame consumed the ancient papers inside.
Seventy years of extortion.
Seventy years of forged deeds.
Seventy years of collateral debts, promissory notes, and blood contracts.
Turning to gray ash in three seconds.
The fire alarm began to wail, a deafening mechanical shriek that echoed off the granite columns.
Overhead sprinkler heads shattered, spraying torrential water across the marble hall.
The councilmen had already scrambled up the wide marble stairs toward the street entrance, shouting for their drivers.
Mercer lay on the wet floor, sobbing, clutching his burned wrist against his ribs.
"My ledgers..." Mercer wheezed through the smoke and falling water.
"Everything... the whole city was in that box..."
Adrien stood over him.
Water poured from the brim of his hair, dripping onto Mercer's face.
"The city was never yours, Daniel," Adrien said.
He racked the slide of the shotgun.
The sound was louder than the fire bells.
Mercer squeezed his eyes shut, trembling violently on the soaked tiles.
"Kill me then," Mercer cried.
"Do it, you bastard!"
Isabella stepped forward through the smoke.
She placed her hand gently on the barrel of Adrien's gun.
Adrien looked down at her.
Her face was illuminated by the dying white embers of the vault safe.
"Don't," she whispered.
"Not for him."
"He killed your father," Adrien said.
His voice was thick with smoke.
"I know," she said.
"And he tried to kill you."
"If you shoot him here, you're the monster your father was."
"Look at the box, Adrien."
Adrien looked back.
The vault was nothing but a blackened, smoking crater of melted steel and drifting soot.
The Voss empire's chains had just burned to nothing.
"The police are two blocks away," she said.
"Let the law take what's left of him."
Adrien lowered the barrel.
He looked down at Mercer with disgust.
"You have five minutes before the sirens arrive, Daniel."
"I suggest you run."
"Because if you're still in this city at sunrise, Silas Vance won't be the only one looking for your head."
Adrien took Isabella's hand.
They walked away from the burning vault.
They walked past the scattered chairs and the broken glass.
They pushed through the heavy bronze doors of the bank into the freezing November night.
The rain had washed the street clean.
The air tasted like clean snow and ozone.
Two blocks away, blue and red emergency lights were strobing against the wet buildings, their sirens screaming through the canyons of stone.
Adrien didn't run.
He pulled Isabella close against his side under the shelter of the stone archway.
"Where will we go?" she asked.
Her hand was warm inside his.
"The estate is burned," Adrien said.
"The docks will belong to the state by morning."
He looked down at her face.
For the first time in two years, the shadow behind her eyes was gone.
"I have a cabin in Maine," he said.
"No vaults."
"No ledgers."
"No locks."
Isabella smiled through her exhaustion.
"Does it have a kitchen?"
May you like
Adrien squeezed her hand.
"Only if you want one."
