Chapter 6 - The Vault Breaks OpenMarcus let out a strangled roar of pain, grabbing his shattered kneecap as blood pooled on the floor.
“You—you bastard!” he snarled, reaching frantically for the pistol holstered beneath his suit jacket.
Before his fingers could wrap around the grip, I lunged across the floor like a starving animal, slamming my weight down onto his wrist and pinning his hand to the concrete. I drove my fist into his jaw once, twice, three times, until his head lolled back and his eyes glazed over in unconsciousness.
Gasping for air in the dwindling oxygen, I crawled back to the console. My chest felt like it was being compressed by a hydraulic press, but the terminal screen was still glowing.
The data transfer from Marcus’s flash drive was paused at ninety-eight percent.
I smashed my fist onto the keyboard, overriding the security lock, and hit the emergency broadcast button.
ALARM. PROTOCOL OMEGA ACTIVE.
Instantly, the heavy steel security doors throughout the entire mansion blew open with pneumatic hisses. Sirens shrieked a deafening war cry across every floor, and red lights were replaced by blinding, brilliant white floodlights.
Footsteps—dozens of them, heavy, disciplined, and fast—pounded down the basement stairs.
Before I could crawl away from the console, Dominic Rosetti burst into the vault, followed by four armed guards with assault rifles raised.
Dominic took one look at unconscious Marcus bleeding on the floor, then at the terminal screen displaying the open financial transfer to The Syndicate of the Seven, and finally at me, coughing violently on the floor.
Dominic didn’t speak. He walked past me, knelt beside his brother, and felt for a pulse. Finding one, Dominic let out a low, dangerous growl.
“Secure him,” Dominic ordered his guards, gesturing to Marcus. Then, he turned his intense, coal-black eyes onto me. He extended a massive, calloused hand down to the floor.
I took it, and he hauled me to my feet in one effortless motion.
“You found the leak,” Dominic said quietly.
“Your brother,” I wheezed, leaning against the cold server rack to keep from collapsing. “He poisoned the board. Up... upstairs. The coffee.”
Dominic’s face went completely blank—the face of an executioner who had just sentenced his own blood. He tapped his comms earpiece.
“Medical team to the main dining hall. Antitoxin protocol alpha, now. Secure the board members.”
He turned back to me, his expression softening just a fraction, revealing a profound, terrifying depth of respect. “You saved my daughter, and now you’ve saved my house. What do you want, Julian? Name your price. Money, power, a new identity anywhere in the world.”
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“I want the truth,” I choked out, clutching my painful chest. “Who am I, Dominic? Why was my name in Eva’s journal?”
Dominic sighed, pulling a thick Manila envelope from his coat pocket and handing it to me. “Read it. Your memory loss wasn't an accident. It was bought and paid for.”
