Page 45 of Marcellus: House of Drakos

Kalayna sat in a chair in the middle of the room with her hands tied behind her back and both feet tied too.

A bomb that detonated by remote, according to the man that placed it there, was strapped to her lap.

She had cried all day long. Now it was after midnight and she hadn’t slept a wink.

Just watching a bomb that she knew could tear her to pieces was too much for her.

But after a day and half the night of nothing but fear and nightmare scenarios running through her head, she was mad. Not angry. She was mad!

“What did I ever do to you, Zee?” she asked the man that was standing across the room smiling at her.

“When Olivier and Freddy didn’t want to promote you to department head, I was the one that spoke up for you.

And when they wanted to demote you for unsatisfactory leadership, I was the one who stopped them.

I’ve always advocated for your retention in the upper echelons of my father’s corporation. And this is how you repay me?”

Zorbo Lay began clapping his hands. “Nice speech.”

“You bastard!” Kalayna said. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Why not? What’s going to happen to me? Is your father going to ruin my life the way he ruined Bob Grishom’s life?

The way he ruined the lives of everybody that deigned to speak up to him and tell the truth about his cost-cutting measures and that JABA MAX switch that everybody knows is fatally flawed? ”

“That switch is not flawed and you know it. And Robert Grishom knew it too. How can you kidnap me and try to destroy my father based on lies?”

“Lies?” He was angry. “What do you mean lies? It’s not lies! Those Drakos planes are unsafe! And I had to prove it.”

“By sabotaging them? How did you do it, Zee? Your department is in charge of the JABA Max switch. What did you do? Did you replace them with defective switches?”

He smiled again. “You and your brother Freddy were always the brains of that bunch.” Then his smile left and he nodded.

“I did better than merely replacing them with defective switches. I didn’t have to replace a thing.

All I had to do was had a component to that JABA MAX switch that allows me to control it remotely.

Just like I can control those explosives on your lap. ”

Kalayna’s heart began to pound. “What do you mean? You have a remote component in my father’s planes?”

“Not all of them. I wish! But the ones that went down, yes, I controlled them remotely. I did that completely undetected. And guess what? There’s one more out there, another big boy, that I will bring down with a push of a button.

Only it doesn’t take off for another couple hours.

But when that time comes, I will press the button and just like those other crashes, that huge, commercial plane carrying nearly four hundred souls will fall out of the sky.

And that will be the end of Drakos Aeronautics.

And after I’m assured that plane is down, then I will leave and then press a separate button to spell your end.

You will fall next. Your good ol’ daddy ruined my life,” Zorbo said with emphasis. “It’s high time somebody ruins his.”

Then he smiled. “Might as well be me.”

Kalayna could hardly believe what she was hearing. Another plane was going down in a matter of hours? Just by the press of a button? And her father knew nothing about it? And then she was going down next? It was too much to bear!

And just like that panic and terror that had consumed Kalayna when she was first abducted, it was all gripping her once again.