He thought he could remember the second.
The third might have been ninety-one, or perhaps nineteen.
Every attempt had ended in failure.
At last, Wells faced the room.
“Fine. Let's make this interesting.”
Nobody spoke.
“Two hundred million dollars,” he announced. “Whoever opens that safe gets two hundred million dollars. Cash, assets, whatever you want. I'll have my lawyers draw up the agreement.”
The specialists exchanged incredulous looks.
One actually laughed before realizing Wells was not smiling.
“You're offering two hundred million dollars for a combination?” he asked.
“I'm offering two hundred million dollars to someone who can accomplish what all of you apparently cannot.”
Wells swept his gaze around the study.
Then his eyes landed on Malachi.
The boy had moved from the hallway to stand beside his mother. He was watching the safe with an intensity that seemed almost unsettling.
Wells's mouth curled.
“What are you looking at?”
Malachi lowered his eyes.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Then stop staring.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paige placed a protective hand on her son's shoulder.
Wells noticed the gesture and laughed.
“Don't tell me the boy thinks he can do better than these professionals.”
A few of the specialists looked away.
Malachi swallowed.
He knew the combination.
He had seen Wells open the safe six nights earlier, shortly before midnight. The study door had been partly open, and Malachi had been walking past on his way to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Wells had been drinking heavily that night. He had spoken aloud while operating the dial, repeating the numbers with the exaggerated satisfaction of a man admiring his own cleverness.
Malachi had watched.
He had not meant to memorize the combination.
He simply remembered it.
Numbers arranged in patterns remained in his mind long after other people forgot them. He could recall pages from books, the arrangement of pieces on a chessboard, and the exact sequence of turns in a puzzle he had solved months earlier.
His teachers called it an extraordinary memory.
Wells had never asked.
Malachi glanced at his mother.
Paige's expression warned him to remain quiet.
But he looked back at the safe.
He thought about the two hundred million dollars.
Not because he wanted a mansion or a sports car.
He thought about his mother's hands, cracked by cleaning chemicals. He thought about the way she sometimes fell asleep at the kitchen table after working double shifts. He thought about the school trip she had told him they could not afford.
And he thought about how Wells had laughed.
Malachi took one small step forward.
“Excuse me, Mr. Stevenson?”
The room fell silent.
Wells turned slowly.
“What?”
“Can I try?”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Wells burst into laughter.
The sound filled the study, bouncing off the polished wood and glass.
“You?”
Malachi stood still.
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to open a three-hundred-thousand-dollar safe?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wells wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye.
“This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. My specialists have spent six days on this problem, and now the housekeeper's little boy thinks he can solve it.”
Paige went pale.
“Mr. Stevenson, I'm sorry. He didn't mean—”
“I asked him, not you.”
Wells stepped toward Malachi.
“You understand what this is, don't you? This isn't one of those toys you get at school. It's not a cartoon puzzle.”
Malachi nodded.
“I understand.”
“No, I don't think you do.”
Wells leaned closer, his voice lowering.
“People spend their entire lives learning things you couldn't possibly understand. This safe was built by the finest engineers in Europe. And you think you can open it because you've watched a few television programs?”
“I didn't watch television, sir.”
“Then what makes you think you're qualified?”
Malachi looked at the dial.
“Because I remember the combination.”
The laughter stopped.
Every person in the room turned toward him.
Wells stared.
“What did you say?”
“I remember the numbers you used when you opened it.”
For several seconds, the only sound was the quiet hum of the air-conditioning.
Then Wells smiled again, but this time there was something cruel in it.
“All right, little man.”
He stepped aside and gestured toward the safe.
“Show us what you've got.”
Malachi walked forward.
Behind him, Paige whispered his name.
He stopped and turned.
She looked frightened, not because she doubted him, but because she knew what Wells could do to people who embarrassed him.
Malachi gave her a small, reassuring nod.
Then he faced the safe.
He raised his hand toward the dial.
And the billionaire who had spent six days trapped by his own arrogance watched a ten-year-old boy prepare to change everything.
Six months earlier, Malachi Dylan had believed that the greatest problem in the world was being overlooked.
He had since learned that being noticed could be worse.
Their apartment stood above a laundromat on the southern side of the city, in a neighborhood where buses rattled past before sunrise and the smell of detergent drifted through the stairwell. The apartment had two bedrooms, although the smaller one was technically a storage room with a narrow window.
Paige had turned it into Malachi's bedroom.
She had painted the walls a soft blue and placed a secondhand desk beneath the window. A bookshelf made from wooden crates stood against one wall. On it sat his schoolbooks, several library books, and a collection of mechanical puzzles he had bought with money earned from helping the owner of a neighborhood grocery store organize his inventory.
It was not a large room.
But it was his.
Every morning, Paige woke at five.
She prepared breakfast, packed Malachi's lunch, and checked that his homework was inside his backpack. Then she put on her work uniform, tied her hair back, and kissed his forehead.
“Remember what we talked about?”
Malachi, usually still half asleep, nodded.
“Be polite. Don't interrupt grown-ups. And if someone says something unkind, don't let it decide who you are.”
“Even if they're rich?”
Paige paused.