Chapter 3 - The Cold Chamber
A subterranean shudder rattled the floorboards beneath their feet. Elena didn't hesitate. Ignoring the throbbing pain in her skull, she stepped over the shattered remnants of the Vance family dinner and sprinted toward the private elevator behind the velvet stage curtain.
""Elena, wait!"" Marcus shouted, signaling two tactical operatives to flank her. ""The blueprints show structural charges tied to the central data banks!""
""If Victor Vance burns those hard drives, twenty years of state-sponsored human trafficking and treason vanish into ash!"" Elena yelled back, pressing her thumb against the biometric scanner of the elevator. The scanner flashed green—her credentials had already overridden the mansion's mainframe.
The elevator plummeted smoothly down three subterranean levels, far beneath the opulent display of wealth upstairs. Here, the air turned stale, sterile, and cold. When the steel doors parted, Elena was greeted by the harsh glare of fluorescent lighting bouncing off reinforced steel walls.
At the end of the corridor, the massive circular door of the vault stood ajar. Thin trails of white smoke seeped from the seam.
Elena drew her service weapon from her concealed holster under her arm. With Marcus and the agents following in low-ready formation, she slipped into the vault.
The room was freezing. Racks of supercomputers hummed loudly, but several terminal screens were already flashing red with rapid lines of overwriting code. In the center of the room sat a solitary figure in a motorized wheelchair.
Victor Vance, the eighty-year-old patriarch believed to be comatose in a Swiss clinic, turned slowly to face them. His eyes were milky with age, yet sharp as surgical scalpels.
""Elena Vance,"" the old man rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves dragged over gravel. ""Or should I say, Agent Vance? I wondered when your father’s blood would show itself.""
Elena froze, her finger hovering over the trigger. ""What did you say?""
""Did you really believe this assignment was random?"" Victor chuckled, a rattling, wet sound deep in his chest. ""You spent three years gathering evidence on Julian, thinking you were dismantling an empire of greed. You thought Julian took your father's shipping firm by force.""
""Julian framed my father for embezzlement and drove him to jump off the harbor bridge,"" Elena said, her voice tightening with raw fury.
Victor smiled, revealing yellowed teeth. ""Your father didn't jump, little girl. And Julian didn't kill him. Look at the monitor behind you.""
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Elena turned her gaze slightly toward the primary wall monitor. The screen displayed live feed footage from a remote airstrip twenty miles outside the city. A private jet was taxiing down the runway.
Standing on the boarding stairs, looking back toward the camera with a calculating grin, was her father.
