Ron Donaldo: Rise Of The Apex Don

Chapter 50

Silas quickly pushed the wireless keyboard across the desk. 

Ron placed his right hand on the keys. His left arm was still strapped tightly to his chest, throbbing with terrible pain. He had to type with one hand. 

Ron began to do the complex math in his head. He carried the ones. He divided the complex fractions. He worked backward from the Golden Ratio, flipping the numbers exactly the way Dr. Aris used to do when he wanted to trick his students on a final exam. 

01:00.

"One minute, Sir," Silas whispered, terrified to break Ron’s concentration. 

Ron’s fingers moved across the keyboard. He typed a long string of numbers into the blank text box. 

3.1415... 

"He combined the Golden Ratio with Pi," Ron muttered, his eyes glued to the screen. "He intertwined the two most perfect numbers to create a spiral code."

Ron finished typing the long, twenty-digit answer. 

00:30.

"Are you sure, Sir?" Silas asked, staring at the numbers in the box. 

"A machine only does exactly what you tell it to do," Ron said confidently. "And Dr. Aris is a machine of habit."

Ron raised his right finger. He slammed it down on the Enter key. 

Click. 

The digital timer on the screen stopped perfectly at 00:22.

For two long, agonizing seconds, the screen was completely frozen. Nobody in the truck breathed. The silence was heavy and terrifying. 

Then, the red text vanished. 

A bright, glowing green box appeared in the center of the screen. 

ACCESS GRANTED. DECRYPTION COMPLETE.

Silas let out a massive, loud cheer. He jumped in the air and hugged Zero. "You did it, Sir! You broke the unbreakable lock!"

Ron did not cheer. He leaned forward. "Open the main file."

Silas quickly sat back down and clicked his mouse on the single, massive folder that appeared on the screen. 

The folder was labeled: THE VAULTS OF JANUS.

When the folder opened, the computer screen went black for a second. Then, a massive, highly detailed, three-dimensional digital map of the entire world appeared on the screens. 

The map was beautiful, glowing with blue and green colors. 

Across the globe, small, bright red dots began to appear, one by one. 

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

"What are those?" Zero asked, pulling his goggles down to look closer. 

"Coordinates," Silas said, reading the data scrolling on his side monitor. "Exact GPS coordinates. Sir, look at the locations. They are absolutely crazy."

Ron looked at the map. There were exactly twelve red dots scattered across the world. 

One dot was located deep in the frozen ice of Antarctica. 

Another dot was located high in the dangerous, snowy peaks of the Swiss Alps. 

One was in the middle of the Sahara Desert. 

Another was on a tiny, unmarked island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Silas clicked on the red dot located in the Swiss Alps. A new window popped up with highly classified blueprints. 

"These are not just bank vaults, Sir," Silas whispered in total awe. "These are underground military fortresses. Look at this one in Switzerland. It says it goes five hundred feet underground. It has blast doors thick enough to survive a direct nuclear strike. It holds ten billion dollars in physical gold bars, and a server farm containing the blackmail files of fifty world leaders."

Ron stared at the screen. The Warlord finally saw the true size of his enemy. 

The Syndicate was not a gang. It was a shadow empire that was preparing to survive the end of the world. And Janus was the king sitting on twelve hidden thrones. 

"If we destroy the Vaults, we destroy their wealth," Ron said, his voice cold and hard. "If we destroy their wealth, we destroy their power. The Syndicate dies."

"Sir," Silas said, his voice suddenly shaking. "Look at the map again."

Ron looked back at the large global map. 

A new, final dot had just appeared. It was blinking rapidly. 

It was the 13th Vault. 

Ron’s eyes widened in complete shock as he looked at the location of the 13th red dot. 

It was not in a desert. It was not in a mountain. 

The 13th red dot was located exactly in the United States. It was located right in the middle of the map. 

It was located directly underneath the city of Oakhaven. 

"What?" Ron whispered, stepping closer to the screen. "There is a Vault under my city?"

Silas clicked on the 13th dot. A massive file opened. 

"Sir," Silas gasped, reading the text. "This is not a gold vault. The file is labeled Janus Prime. It says this is the main command center for the entire Syndicate. The global communications hub."

Ron’s brilliant brain connected the final puzzle pieces. 

"The Sterling Core," Ron said softly, the horrible truth finally hitting him. 

He turned around and looked at Dr. Aris in the cage. The old man was crying silently. 

"You did not steal my engine to make money, Aris," Ron said, his voice rising in anger. "You did not build the Sterling Core to sell it to the public! You built it to provide absolute, infinite power to a massive, secret underground fortress! You were building the power source for Janus!"

Dr. Aris nodded weakly. "Yes. The Vault is located deep beneath the bedrock of Oakhaven. It is a city beneath the city. They needed your infinite energy engine to survive down there forever without ever needing the surface."

"And when I exposed the company," Ron continued, his eyes wide. "When I took the building back... The Director tried to blow up the engine. He tried to destroy the city to cover up the entrance to the Vault!"

"Yes," Dr. Aris sobbed. "The explosion would have buried the entrance forever. Janus would have been safe in the dark."

Ron turned back to the screen. 

He was standing right on top of the enemy’s main fortress. The most powerful man in the world was hiding deep beneath his feet. 

"Open the file labeled 'Janus Identity'," Ron commanded Silas. "I want to see the face of the monster."

Silas clicked the final, highly encrypted file. The computer hummed loudly. A decoding bar loaded slowly across the screen. 10%... 50%... 90%... 

100%.

A high-resolution photograph appeared in the center of the large monitor. 

Ron Donaldo stopped breathing. The blood completely drained from his face. His heart slammed violently against his ribs. 

He stared at the face on the screen. He felt dizzy. The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the absolute, earth-shattering shock hitting his brain. 

It was a face he knew perfectly. It was a face he had loved. It was a face he had mourned and cried for over ten years ago. 

It was the face of the man who had taught him how to build his very first machine when he was a little boy. 

"No," Ron whispered. His voice broke. "It is impossible. He is dead."

Under the photograph, the name was printed in clear, bold, white letters. 

THOMAS DONALDO.

Janus, the terrifying, ruthless leader of the global Syndicate... the monster who had ordered the murder of three thousand men... the man who had let his own son rot in a dark prison cell for five years... 

Was Ron’s own father.