Chapter 5 - The Submerged Vault
The water inside the cargo hold was rising fast. It had reached Vince’s chest, and the bitter cold began leaching the strength from his limbs.
"Vince... the bilge vents," Sofia coughed, spitting out seawater as he held her above the surface. Her strength was failing rapidly, the hypothermia compounding months of heavy sedation. "There's an inspection shaft behind the bulkhead paneling... it leads to the propeller shaft alley."
Vince waded toward the back of the flooded hold, his boots slipping on the slick, fuel-coated deck plates. He found the rectangular vent Sofia pointed to, its iron grille bolted into the hull. Without hesitation, he hooked his fingers into the rusted mesh and wrenched it with raw, adrenaline-fueled power, tearing the bolts from the rotted metal framing.
"Hold your breath," Vince commanded, lifting Sofia so her head was near the ceiling where a six-inch pocket of air remained. "I’m taking you up first."
He pushed her through the narrow square opening into the dark maintenance tunnel above the water level, then hauled himself up after her. They collapsed onto a narrow catwalk that ran parallel to the ship’s primary drive shaft. Below them, Deck Four was entirely submerged.
Sofia lay shivering violently against the steel grate, her skin translucent. Vince pulled off his sodden tactical jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, pressing his forehead against hers. "Look at me, Sof. Stay with me. Lily is waiting."
A faint, bittersweet smile touched her lips. "She has your temper, you know. She wouldn't cry. Not even when they locked us in the clinic."
"Why did they keep you alive?" Vince asked, checking the magazine of his Kimber, clearing the water from the chamber. "If they wanted the shipping lanes, Marcus could have killed you six months ago."
"Because the Moreno family offshore accounts aren't controlled by digital keys," Sofia murmured, her teeth chattering. "Your grandfather designed the vault system with dual biometric authorization. Mine and yours. If I died before you signed the inheritance transfer, the entire trust defaulted to a blind escrow in Geneva. They needed me alive until you signed Bella’s merger."
Vince clenched his fist until his knuckles turned stark white. Everything had been calculated. The fire, the fake dental records, Bella’s calculated arrival in his life during his deepest mourning, playing the comforting, grieving family friend who slowly guided him toward handing over the keys to his dynasty.
"They're going to pay for every second you spent in the dark," Vince whispered.
Suddenly, Sofia reached down to her collarbone. Sewn beneath the skin near her left clavicle was a raised, rectangular scar. "They didn't find it," she whispered. "The surgeon Marcus hired was sloppy. He thought he took the micro-ledger, but he only took the decoy."
Vince looked down in shock. "The real ledger is inside you?"
"It’s an encrypted drive containing Marcus's complete black-market manifests—weapons, chemical precursors, off-the-books transactions through every port between here and Singapore. Julian handled the banking. If this ledger reaches the Department of Justice, the entire Sterling syndicate collapses."
A heavy thud vibrated through the metal catwalk above them. Footsteps.
Marcus’s voice filtered down through the ventilation shaft. "Check the emergency shaft! If they aren't floating in the hold, they climbed into the crawlspace! Don't let them reach the deck!"
Vince looked at Sofia. She could barely stand. Carrying her through an active firefight across an open shipyard while Marcus's men held the high ground was suicide.
"Can you crawl fifty yards?" Vince asked softly.
May you like
Sofia nodded weakly. "Toward what?"
"Toward the auxiliary crane controls," Vince replied, his eyes dark with lethal resolve. "I’m not escaping this ship, Sofia. I’m bringing it down on top of them."
