The silence in the grand ballroom was deafening. Thousands of dollars' worth of champagne glasses remained suspended in mid-air as eyes shifted from the slick, dark-suited lawyer to the frail old man holding a single crushed white rose.

Before Thomas could answer, the lights in the library flickered violently. A low, vibrating hum resonated through the floorboards, shaking the crystal glasses on the side table.

Harrison pulled a suppressed pistol from beneath his jacket instantly. "Sir, the power grid for the lower level has been bypassed!"

"They aren't taking him to jail," Evelyn said, unzipping her duffel bag and pulling out a tactical submachine gun. "The FBI arrest was a decoy. The agents who took Julian... they weren't federal officers."

Thomas stood up, all traces of weariness instantly vanishing from his face. "Mercenaries."

"The Black Vanguard," Evelyn corrected, pulling back the bolt of her weapon with a sharp clack. "Julian sold us out to the people who killed my father."

Down in the subterranean catacombs beneath Vance Manor, deep beneath the concrete foundation, Julian Vance was not in a cell.

He was standing in a dimly lit, high-tech hallway, holding an ice pack to his cheek where he had been struck earlier. The two 'FBI agents' were stripping off their uniform jackets, revealing heavy body armor decorated with the crimson emblem of the Black Vanguard syndicate.

"Did you get it?" demanded a tall, scarred man who stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hall. He wore a sharp grey suit and walked with a silver-topped cane.

Julian fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small, blood-stained metal cylinder—the key he had palmed when he shoved Thomas to the floor during the wedding scene.

"I got it, Commander Vance," Julian said, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of fear and ambition.

The man with the cane turned around. Under the bright LED strip lights, his face was revealed—a face identical to Julian’s, but thirty years older, scarred, and cold as ice.

Victor Vance. The father Julian claimed was dead.

"Well done, my son," Victor purred, taking the cylinder and examining the intricate, glowing LED ring around its base. "The old fool thought he could hide the Sterling AI core under a pile of dirt. He thought his little humble act would redeem you."

Victor laughed—a dark, echoing sound that filled the cold concrete tunnel.

"Now, we unlock the network. We crash the financial markets, and we take back what Sterling stole from us twenty years ago."

"What about the girl?" Julian asked, a cruel smile returning to his lips. "Evelyn is back. I saw her bike outside."