Chapter 16 - The Broken SealThe pneumatic seal of the safe room door hissed open with a cloud of compressed steam.
Diego stood in the threshold, his shoulder bleeding from a graze, lowering his smoking shotgun as Ramon approached. Elena and Maya stepped out from the shadows of the room, unharmed, though the little girl's eyes were wide with a fierce, burning intensity.
"Are you hit?" Ramon asked, looking down at Elena.
"I'm fine," she breathed, wrapping her arms around her waist. "They... they were trying to access the secondary console. Did they get the Zurich uplink?"
Ramon reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, heavy-duty metallic device—the master kill-switch for the estate's local server—and crushed it in his fist. Sparks flew, followed by a final, dying whir as every computer screen in the underground bunker went permanently dark.
"There is no Zurich uplink anymore," Ramon said flatly. "The ledger died with them."
Maya stepped forward, stopping right in front of Ramon. She looked up at the towering mafia boss, her small face mirroring his exact expression of calm, dangerous resolve.
"They won't stop coming, will they?" she asked, her voice steady. "As long as my name is an Ortega."
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Ramon looked down at her for a long moment, then placed his gloved hand gently on her dark hair.
"Then we make sure there's no one left to say it," Ramon replied softly.
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