Chapter 6 - Crossfire in the SuiteWood splinters rained down like confetti across the polished marble floor.
"Don't move!"
Three armed guards in tactical black gear, led by Marcus Vance himself, swarmed into the suite. Marcus lowered a compact tactical tablet, his sharp eyes taking in the shattered coffee cup, the rumpled clothes on the floor, and the two of us standing frozen by the workstation console.
"Mr. Reed," Marcus said, a cold, mocking smile twisting his lips. "And Mrs. Reed. How cozy. I'm afraid your morning upload has been terminated."
Marcus stepped forward, his boots crunching on the porcelain shards, and tapped his tablet. On the workstation monitor, our upload progress bar froze at 94% before snapping backward into a red deletion loop.
File Erased.
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. Months of work, twenty years of suppressed truth, the only concrete evidence linking Richard Reed to my father’s murder—gone in a single keystroke.
"You're too late, Marcus," Graham said, his voice dangerously low as he stepped in front of me, shielding me from the guards' line of sight. "The federal grand jury in Chicago already received the initial data packet via automated sync at midnight."
Marcus laughed, a dry, grating sound. "The midnight sync? You mean the one your little analyst here tried to send from her personal laptop before we wiped her hard drive in room 412? Sorry, Graham. We scrubbed her apartment clean before you even finished your champagne at Aureole."
My breath hitched. My apartment. My backup hard drive, my personal journals, my father’s old ledger entries—they had it all.
"You broke into my apartment," I said, my voice shaking with a cold, terrifying fury as I stepped out from behind Graham’s shoulder. "You searched my home."
"We protect the family assets, Miss Vance—or should I say, Mrs. Reed?" Marcus sneered, taking another step closer. He gestured to the two guards flanking him. "Mr. Richard Reed requests your presence in the grand ballroom immediately. The press conference starts in ten minutes, and the board needs a unified front to announce your husband's 'voluntary retirement' due to unforeseen medical emergencies."
"And if we refuse?" Graham asked, his hand sliding slowly toward his pocket.
"Then we carry you out in body bags," Marcus said flatly. "And the official report will state that the newlyweds had a tragic domestic dispute involving a balcony slip. Las Vegas is full of accidents, Mr. Reed. You should know—your family wrote the playbook."
The guards raised their sidearms, the black barrels glinting menacingly under the penthouse lights.
For a terrifying second, the math of our situation was brutally simple. We were outgunned, outmaneuvered, and cornered on the forty-first floor of a hotel owned by the very men who wanted us dead.
Then Graham smiled.
It wasn't the Ice King's smirk, and it wasn't the desperate grin of a cornered beast. It was a calm, chilling expression of absolute certainty.
"Marcus," Graham said softly, tilting his head. "Did you ever wonder why I had the penthouse suite rewired with independent satellite uplinks last week?"
Marcus frowned, his tactical instincts flaring. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that this suite isn't connected to Reed Global's local server," Graham said, pressing a hidden micro-switch embedded in the underside of the desk. "It’s routed directly through a secure military-grade orbital relay belonging to Southwest Transit's federal oversight committee."
The workstation monitor suddenly flickered back to life, bypassing the red deletion loop entirely.
A bright green text box flashed across the screen: SECURE SYNC COMPLETE. 100%. DATA PACKET RECEIVED BY DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE.
Marcus’s face drained of all color. He lunged forward, raising his tablet to kill the power, but it was already too late.
"Grab them!" Marcus roared, panic finally cracking his stoic facade.
May you like
The guards lunged, but Graham grabbed the heavy mahogany chair beside the desk and hurled it directly into their path, sending them crashing into the glass breakfast table in a violent tangle of splintered wood and flying china.
"Run!" Graham shouted, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the private service balcony overlooking the glittering expanse of the Las Vegas Strip.
