CHAPTER NINE – THE CHOICE NO FATHER SHOULD EVER MAKE
Police officers raised their weapons.
"Don't move!"
Charles merely laughed.
"You still think this ends with an arrest?"
He pressed a small remote hidden in his pocket.
A deep rumble shook the entire underground facility.
Emergency alarms erupted.
"Self-destruct sequence initiated," a computerized voice announced.
"Fifteen minutes until containment failure."
Detective Harris cursed.
"We have to evacuate!"
"No," Charles replied calmly.
"You have to choose."
He pointed toward two reinforced corridors.
"One path leads to the children."
"The other leads to the evidence that exposes everything I've built over thirty years."
Richard stared at him.
"You're lying."
Charles smiled.
"Perhaps."
"But can you afford to guess?"
The tactical team split.
Officers rushed toward the archive room to secure evidence.
Richard didn't hesitate.
He grabbed Emily's hand.
"We're getting the boys."
They sprinted down the left corridor.
The air filled with smoke as emergency doors slammed shut behind them.
At the end of the hallway stood three glass containment rooms.
Inside each one was a frightened child.
Ethan.
Noah.
Liam.
Each room required a separate manual release.
Only one could be opened every sixty seconds.
The countdown clock above the doors flashed:
08:43
Emily stared in horror.
"We don't have enough time."
Richard looked from one son to another.
For the first time in his life, the billionaire who could buy almost anything faced something money could never solve.
He whispered through shaking lips,
"I can't choose."
Then Liam looked directly at Emily.
His small voice remained astonishingly calm.
"Miss Emily..."
She rushed toward the glass.
"What is it?"
"The white-haired man said you'd know the secret door."
Emily froze.
A forgotten memory surfaced.
She was twenty-two years old again...
Standing in this very building...
Holding a newborn baby in her arms...
May you like
The memory she had buried for decades suddenly returned.
And with it came the horrifying realization that she had been inside this facility long before she ever met Richard Hawthorne.
