Chapter 224 IN A SINGLE NIGHT.

Chapter 224 IN A SINGLE NIGHT.
\~~~DAMIEN.

“Boss, move!” Melissa’s voice screamed sharply in my ear, cutting through the heavy silence of the room like a siren. “Get away from the desk right now! The blast radius of the rerouted detonation is going to swallow the entire office!”

My eyes locked onto James. I didn't hesitate. I threw myself backward toward the heavy wooden door, scrambling to get out of the direct line of the desk. 

James sneered, his face twisting into a mask of pure, ugly triumph. 

“You think you can call my bluff?” James yelled over the sound of the rain, his thumb hovering over the black plastic remote. “You think I won’t do it? Burn in hell, Damien!”

He slammed his thumb down hard onto the red button. 

For a fraction of a second, absolute silence hung in the air. James stood proudly behind his desk, waiting for the distant, cataclysmic shockwave of a hospital collapsing miles away. He expected to hear sirens. He expected to hear screaming. 

Instead, the desk directly in front of him roared. 

A blinding wall of white-hot fire erupted from the explosives wired beneath the wood. The blast didn't travel down the city lines to St. Jude’s, as Melissa’s code caught the signal midair, twisted the digital destination, and slammed the detonation right back to the origin point. 

The explosion was deafening. 

The desk disintegrated into a million burning splinters in a single microsecond. A massive wall of flame and concussive force blasted upward, tearing the roof off the second-floor office and sending chunks of concrete and shattered glass flying in every direction. 

The shockwave hit me like a runaway freight train. 

Even though I had lunged backward toward the door, the violence of the blast picked me up off my feet and slammed me hard against the concrete hallway wall. The air rushed out of my lungs in a sharp gasp. My head cracked against the brick, ringing violently, and a hot line of blood trickled down the side of my face. 

I slid down the wall, coughing through the thick, choking cloud of black smoke and sulfur that filled the room. 

“Boss! Boss, talk to me!” Ethan’s voice shouted frantically through my earpiece, muffled by the roaring fire inside the office. “Are you okay? We heard the blast!”

I forced myself to take a ragged breath, pressing a hand against my ribs. A sharp, burning pain flared in my side, but nothing felt broken. I was just bruised, battered, and ringing from the concussive wave. 

“I’m… I’m alive,” I rasped out, wiping the smoke and sweat from my eyes as I staggered back to my feet. “The reroute worked.”

“It worked!” Melissa’s voice chimed in, sounding breathless and triumphant over the comms. “The hospital is completely safe, boss. Signal intercepted, redirected, and detonated locally. Clean sweep!”

“Good girl, Melissa,” I muttered, gripping my sidearm tighter as I peered back into the wrecked office. 

The room was unrecognizable. The walls were scorched pitch-black, the window frames were blown clean out into the night, and thick smoke poured toward the rainy sky. 

In the center of the room, standing right where the desk used to be, was James. 

Or what was left of him. 

It didn’t look like he had died. That would be too quick, and ctoo clean for a monster like him. But the blast had caught him point-blank. 

The right side of his suit was completely burned away, hanging off his body in charred, smoking shreds. His hair was singed down to the scalp, and his skin was horribly blistered, glowing a raw, angry red where the fire had stripped away the upper layers. He staggered forward on unsteady legs, coughing up thick black ash, clutching his ruined right arm as blood began to seep through the burnt fabric. 

He didn't scream. He was in too much shock for that. He just stared down at his mangled, shaking hands, completely paralyzed by what had just happened. 

“W… what what…” James choked out, his voice a raspy, bubbling wheeze as he spat a mouthful of blood onto the charred floorboards. “What did you do…?”

I walked slowly through the debris, my boots crunching over burning wood and glass. I stopped just a few feet away from him, keeping my gun leveled steadily at his chest. 

“I didn't do anything, James,” I said, my voice cold and flat. “You did this to yourself. You built the bomb. You brought it here. My team just made sure it stayed home.”

James raised his head slowly. His left eye was swollen shut, but his right eye glared at me with a sickening mix of agony and disbelief. He tried to reach for the shoulder holster where his pistol was tucked, but his burned fingers refused to grip the leather. He stumbled, falling hard onto his knees amid the ash. 

“Kill me,” James gasped, coughing up more blood as he looked up from the floor. “Just… just put a bullet in my head, Damien. Do it.”

I lowered the gun slightly, letting out a cold, humorless laugh. 

“Kill you?” I shook my head, stepping closer. “No, James. Death is an easy way out. You don’t get to die tonight.”

James froze, looking up at me with sudden, creeping dread. 

“For twenty years, you lived in the dark,” I continued, my voice dropping into a harsh, merciless register. “You thought you were a genius. You thought you could tear down my life, terrorize my wife, and play God with everyone around you. But it’s all over.”

I watched the color drain further from his ruined face as the full reality set in. 

“Your Swiss accounts are frozen,” I told him, counting them off on my fingers. “Every single dollar, shell company, and offshore asset you spent decades building is locked down tight by the government. You’re broke, James. You don’t have a penny left to your name.”

James let out a weak, desperate choke. “No… no, that’s impossible…”

“Your network is gone,” I pressed on, ignoring his panic. “Miller, Grey, and every other crooked fixer you had are sitting in a federal black site right now, spilling every secret you ever told them. Your entire operation has been dismantled in a single night.”

He tried to speak, but only a dry rattle came out of his throat.