Page 75 of Marcellus: House of Drakos
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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The entire family sat around the huge dining table in the dining hall and waited for Marcellus to come downstairs.It was after midnight, but all of his children were there, except for Kalayna, and all of his baby mothers too. Natalia looked as if she’d been crying all that night, but she was there too.
Alex and Oz, along with Kari whom the baby mothers actually took to while the men were gone, were also at that table. They were showered and dressed and ready to assist Marcellus wherever they could. Alex was one-hundred percent sold on the man. Oz was getting there.
And then the elevator doors opened and Marcellus, with Savannah right by his side, made their way to the dining hall. Juliet and Sharon looked at each other. Natalia and Peggy looked at each other. None of the baby mothers wanted her there. But the sons didn’t give a shit. They just wanted their sister back.
Marcellus sat Savannah down next to the chair at the head of the table and then he sat down at the head of the table. Scottie stood at the head of the table on the other end, a spot usually reserved for Olivier.
“What do we know so far?” Marcellus asked him.
“They found her security detail overnight.”
That interested everyone. “Where were they?”
“They had been removed from their vehicles, by heavy gunpoint apparently, and placed in a van. That van took themto another remote location where they were all shot and killed, execution-style, and left.”
Gasps could be heard. “It’s too much!” Natalia cried out.
“Sounds like either Mafia, or hired guns,” said Oz. “More likely hired guns.”
Scottie nodded. “That’s what we think too,” he said.
Alex and Kari looked at Marcellus when Natalia cried out. And they could tell his heart was with that woman. But when they looked at Savannah she seemed unfazed. As if she was either resigned to the fact that Marcellus and Natalia would always have an unusual relationship, or she was wholly unthreatened by it. Knowing the little they knew of Savannah, they would go with the latter option.
“What I don’t understand,” said Freddy, “is what could Zorbo Lay have against you, Daddy? He never spoke of any gripes with you.”
“Maybe there’s a different connection,” Alex said.
Everybody looked at him. He was famous as far as they were concerned. He once dated A-list, Academy Award winning actresses and hung out with Presidents and Kings. He had instant credibility with all of them. “What do you mean?” Freddy asked him.
“Perhaps the connection could be, not between your father and Zorbo Lay per se, but between Zorbo Lay and Grishom.”
“Why would you think that?” Oz asked his brother.
“It’s been a decade since you sued Grishom, right?” he asked Marcellus.
“At least that, yes.”
“Why would he suddenly want to be involved with something to do with you unless somebody else, like a Zorbo Lay, had recruited him just as he said. But maybe they both felt that you somehow destroyed their lives.”
“I don’t even know Zorbo Lay except in very minor ways. How could I have destroyed his life?”
“I don’t know,” said Alex, “but it has to be something recent.”
“Recent?” said Marcellus. And as soon as he said it, he realized it. “That’s it.”
