Chapter 28 - Inside the Vault
I stood up, stepping over the fallen mercenaries, and walked up to the massive steel vault door of the safe room. The digital keypad was blackened and fried, but the manual locking wheel was turned completely to the locked position.
I tapped the emergency intercom plate twice.
"Sophie? Theo? Can you hear me?" I called out, my voice trembling slightly for the first time in years.
A long, agonizing pause stretched across the room. Then, the heavy steel door clicked, the internal hydraulic pistons hissing as the door slowly swung inward.
Standing in the center of the reinforced safe room, shielding Theo, Miles, and Nora behind her, was four-year-old Sophie. Her dress was smudged with soot and dust, but her eyes were remarkably steady. Clutched tightly in her small arms was that battered cloth doll.
Behind her, Elena rushed forward, sobbing uncontrollably as she fell to her knees, hugging the triplets tightly.
"You came back," Sophie whispered, looking up at me with those familiar steel-grey eyes.
I dropped my carbine to the floor, fell to one knee, and opened my arms. Sophie didn't hesitate—she ran straight into my chest, burying her face in my shoulder as I wrapped my arms around her and the triplets, pulling all of them close.
"I told you," I murmured, my voice thick with emotion. "I protect my family. Always."
"Not quite finished yet, son," Vincent’s voice echoed from the doorway.
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I looked up to see my father standing in the entrance, his carbine raised, staring down the long hallway toward the security annex.
Footsteps echoed from the darkness—heavy, tactical, and numerous. The Zurich board’s primary extraction team had just regrouped for a final push.
