Chapter 14 - The Traitor UnmaskedNatalie twisted the door handle with absolute silence and slipped out into the dimly lit hallway.
The air was ice-cold, carrying the faint, unmistakable scent of expensive Parisian cologne—a scent that belonged to only one man within their inner circle.
Marcus Vance, Daniel’s head of corporate security and the man who had supposedly saved Daniel’s life during the docks shootout two years ago.
Standing just outside the closed door of the nursery, Marcus held a silent, compressed tactical submachine gun in one hand and a digital tablet in the other, tapping rapidly on the screen to disable the final layer of biometric locks on the children's door.
“You always did have terrible taste in domestic help, Daniel,” Marcus muttered to himself, stepping closer to the handle.
“And you always did have a terrible eye for surveillance blind spots, Marcus,” a cool, lethal voice whispered from directly behind him.
Marcus spun around, his weapon snapping up, but he was a fraction of a second too late.
Natalie didn’t aim for a warning. With a brutal, calculated strike, she brought the heavy brass candlestick down hard against Marcus’s right wrist. A sharp crack echoed through the hallway as bones fractured. The submachine gun dropped uselessly onto the thick carpet, muffled by the wool.
Before Marcus could scream, Natalie swept his legs out from under him, pinned him face-down onto the floor, and pressed the heel of her boot directly into his spine with crushing force.
The door to the master bedroom swung open, and Daniel stepped out into the hall, his gun leveled squarely at the back of Marcus’s head. His face was a mask of cold, unmitigated fury.
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“Marcus,” Daniel said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. “After everything I gave you... after I pulled you out of the gutter in Marseille... you sold out my children?”
Marcus spat blood onto the rug, laughing hysterically beneath the weight of Natalie’s boot. “You think you won, Brooks? You think the Vanguard cares about money? They don’t want your cash. They want your bloodline. The boy... the boy carries the encryption key to the global syndicate accounts in his DNA profile. They’re coming for him, and you can’t protect him forever!”
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