The Worthless Son-In-Law's Trillion Dollars Secret

Chapter 8: Family Secrets

Romeo’s Point of View

Time was moving slowly. The gun in David Black’s hands was pointed right at me. There were at least twenty soldiers lined up behind him, all of them armed and ready to fire. The safe house was disintegrating around us. The battle was raging right outside our walls. And I was going to die.

Now Margaret Chen fired her own trigger.

The noise of the firing of the gun in the vault room was deafening. The sound of the gun was followed by the scream of one of David Black’s soldiers as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. The moment turned into chaos with the single shot. Vincent pulled me backward into the vault. Emma was already dragging her mother with her.

"Go! There's a back exit. Move!" Vincent yelled.

David Black opened fire. The bullets stripped through the walls as if they'd been constructed of tissue paper. The vault itself was built to resist an attack, but it was not going to give an inch. Still, I knew we couldn't hole up there forever. There would come a time when we'd be trapped.

Vincent was embedding codes into a hidden panel on the wall of the vault. A section of the metal wall slid open, revealing another entrance into the tunnel. "This one leads to the river," Vincent said. "Go. Both of you. Now."

"Come with us," I said. But already, I was making my way down into the tunnel, knowing that he wouldn’t. Vincent had been looking out for me my whole life, and this was no different.

"I'm going to hold them here," Vincent said. He pulled out a gun from inside his jacket. "This is the first time I've ever seen Vincent with a gun," I said. "It makes him look older, harder. As if he'd been this way all along until he became my grandfather’s second in command," Alessia said. "To buy you time. That’s my job," Vincent said.

Emma and Margaret were already in the tunnel. Their footsteps echoed through the air. David Black’s soldiers poured into the vault room, while Vincent’s return fire could be heard. Gunshots reverberated in the steel-lined room.

I forced myself to run. I pursued Emma and Margaret into the darkness of the tunnel. Behind me, the battle was still raging, getting closer, getting more fervent. Will Vincent make it through this? Will I ever lay eyes on Vincent again?

The tunnel was smaller than the one we’d gone through earlier. The walls seemed to press in on me as I ran. Emergency lighting flickered on automatically, leading the way. I could hear the sound of the river rushing by somewhere up ahead. My lungs burned, but I didn’t slow. I couldn’t slow.

"Come on!" I yelled after Emma and Margaret in front of me. "Don't stop."

We found ourselves in an enormous room with an underground river. There was a small boat awaiting us there, already carrying provisions. Emma assisted her mother into the boat, followed by me. Who could have gotten this prepared? The identity of this person was not known, but it was an act of kindness nonetheless.

I turned on the key, and the startup was loud. The boat pulled away from the dock just as more soldiers emerged from the tunnel entrance. They opened fire, but we were out of range in the darkness. The river bore us along, carrying us away from the safe house, from David Black, from all of it.

For a few minutes, all that could be heard was the sound of the engine and the sound of the water. Emma was holding her mother, and Margaret was weeping. Margaret was weeping for her betrayal, her decision, her transgressions. Margaret was weeping because she had been on the side of the enemy, and now the only way to stop them was by firing a weapon. The world that Margaret knew was finished.

"I'm sorry," Margaret kept repeating. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know there were more of them. I didn't know about David Black. There was no mention of an older brother from Marcus."

"How many are there?" I asked. The question was spoken firmly, almost angrily. "How many black brothers are there?"

"I don't know," Margaret said. "Marcus said his family was small. Only him and Alexander, his twin brother. He said Alexander was dead. No one else."

The boat cruised through the underground river, following a route which seemed carefully planned. Did my grandfather chart all escape routes in this city? Did his planning run this deep? My grandfather had planned my marriage, protected me from assassins all these twenty-three years. There was still so much that was unknown to me.

The river started to widen. Ahead of me, there was light. Real daylight, not those emergency flashes. We were approaching the boundary of the city, or rather, the place where the underground river broke into the world. Soon we'd emerge into the open. Soon we'd all be visible.

"Where are we going?" Emma asked. Now she was holding on to my arm, her grip digging into me as if she was afraid of losing me.

"I don't know," I admitted. "We've got to find someone safe. We've

got to contact someone in the Phoenix Empire we can trust. Only problem is, I don't

know who that is anymore."

The boat came out from the darkness into the light. We found ourselves on the edge of the city. The river broadened there into a larger waterway which led towards the sea. The sun was setting, filling the sky with hues of color which seemed not of this world. It would have been lovely in other circumstances. But not then.

I pulled the boat towards an abandoned-looking dock. As we got closer, I noticed something that chilled me to the bone. There were fresh tire tracks on the dock. There were footprints in the dirt. Someone had been here recently.

"Get down," I whispered.

Emma and Margaret quickly hit the bottom of the boat, sensing instinctively the nearness of danger. Meanwhile, I carefully turned the boat toward the dock, all of my muscles tense with anticipation of what was going to happen next.

A figure emerged from the rear of an old warehouse. It was a woman. She was tall with dark hair. Her expression was sharp. However, she was holding a gun. The problem was that the gun was not pointed at me. It was pointed at the ground. Moreover, there was relief on her face.

"Romeo Martinez?" she asked. Her voice was professional, controlled. "My name is Agent Sarah Chen. I'm with the federal government. Your grandfather Edward Martinez has arrangements with my agency from years ago. If anything was going to happen to him or if you ever found yourself in danger, it was my responsibility to locate you and protect you."

I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I couldn’t. However, we knew we didn’t have many choices left.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" I asked.

Sarah Chen smiled slightly. She reached into her pocket slowly, showing her hands the entire time. She pulled out a photograph and held it up. It was a picture of my grandfather with a young woman who looked like she could be Sarah's sister. They were standing together in an office somewhere, and they were both smiling.

"Your grandfather was my uncle," said Sarah. "My mother was his sister. The family has been protecting you all of your life, Romeo. We've been waiting for this moment. We've been preparing for it."

From behind me, more individuals emerged from the warehouse. Federal agents. Police officers. Individuals who seemed ready to do battle. My grandfather had constructed an entire safety net around me, which I was only beginning to realize.

But then the expression on Sarah's face shifted. She looked beyond me, up into the sky. Her face turned white. "Get down!" she screamed. "Get down now!" I turned to look behind me, and what she was seeing, I was seeing. Helicopters. Military helicopters. Circling in the sky above us. And on the side of each helicopter was written the same symbol. The symbol of the Shadow Syndicate. They had found us again. This time, they had brought everything.