Fire in the First Garage
Chapter 15 - Fire in the First Garage
The original Mercer & Bennett garage stood behind Cross Motorworks, hidden by modern storage buildings.
A city preservation order had prevented Victor from demolishing it, though he repeatedly called it unsafe.
Inside remained early blueprints, prototype parts, and production records that could verify the ledgers.
The night before investigators planned to search it, the garage caught fire.
Sofia saw the flames from across the industrial district.
Elias arrived before firefighters and tried to enter. Luis and two workers restrained him as the roof beams cracked.
“That is my life in there!” he shouted.
Sofia held his face between her hands.
“No. You are standing here.”
Fire crews contained the blaze before it reached the neighboring buildings, but most paper records burned.
Investigators found an accelerant trail and a broken fuel container bearing Dominic’s fingerprints.
Police arrested him at his apartment.
Victor’s final trap was elegant: Dominic had handled the container during a promotional factory tour weeks earlier. Security footage showed him near the garage on the wedding morning. His public break with the company supplied motive.
Dominic refused to ask Sofia for help.
She went anyway.
Through the visitation glass, he looked exhausted.
“You should let them charge me,” he said. “People will believe it because of who I was.”
“Being guilty of cruelty does not make you guilty of every crime.”
“I helped build the man they will see.”
“Then help dismantle him.”
Dominic remembered a detail from Victor’s office. His father wore an antique signet ring containing a secure access chip. The chip opened a hidden vehicle bay beneath Cross Tower.
Investigators searched it.
They found the company van used to plant evidence in Elias’s apartment, clothing from the garage arson, and a portable drive containing deleted security footage.
The footage showed Victor’s personal assistant delivering the fuel container to Roland’s deputy.
Dominic was released.
The assistant accepted immunity and identified Victor as the person who ordered the fire.
Police obtained an arrest warrant.
But Victor Cross had disappeared.
His private aircraft remained grounded. His accounts were frozen. His passport registered no exit.
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Elias studied the map of the industrial complex.
“He did not run from the company,” he said. “Men like Victor run deeper inside it.”
