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The silence in the room wasn't just quiet; it was heavy, suffocation-level pressure. Carmen’s face drained of every ounce of color, her bright red dress suddenly looking like a crimson shroud. The nineteen high-society women around the dining tables sat frozen, half-filled glasses of wine suspended in mid-air. / Chapter 16 / 20

Chapter 16 - Prison Breach Protocol

A single silenced round caught Evelyn in the shoulder, knocking her off her feet. She collapsed onto the damp concrete with a painful cry.

"Cover!" Marcus roared, firing three rapid rounds at the gunman.

The towering man stepped back into the dark vault, slamming the massive steel door shut behind him. The heavy hydraulic locks engaged with a deep THUD-THUD-THUD.

"Evelyn!" I rushed over to the fallen woman, pressing my hand against her shoulder wound to stop the bleeding.

"The... the vault..." Evelyn gasped, clutching my coat sleeve with bloody fingers. "It's an airlock trap... Victor... he went in, but my mother... she's not in prison, Gabriel..."

Marcus knelt beside us, radioing for emergency support. "What do you mean she's not in prison?!"

"This morning..." Evelyn coughed, blood flecking her lips. "She faked a stroke at the penitentiary... Sterling's men intercepted the ambulance on the highway... She’s in the building, Gabriel... She’s upstairs..."

A cold bolt of absolute horror struck through my spine.

I pulled out my cell phone and frantically checked the security camera feeds for Grandview Tower. The live feed from the lobby was dead. The penthouse feed—dead.

At that exact moment, the emergency sirens inside the skyscraper began to howl. A blaring automated voice echoed through the ventilation shafts:

"WARNING. SYSTEM OVERRIDE. FIRE SUPPRESSION PROTOCOL INITIATED. PENTHOUSE LEVEL IS NOW LOCKED DOWN."

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The heavy brass key felt impossibly cold against my palm, yet the metal hummed with a quiet, persistent gravity. I stared down at the simple platinum band on my left ring finger—the same ring Mara had slipped onto my hand twelve years ago in a quiet ceremony by the coast. She had always joked that my fingerprints would eventually wear the metal down to a thread.

The heavy brass key felt impossibly cold against my palm, yet the metal...

I didn’t wipe the blood from my nose. I let it drip onto the pristine white bodice of my ten-thousand-dollar wedding gown, watching the crimson bloom against the silk like ink on parchment.

I didn’t wipe the blood from my nose. I let it drip onto the pristine wh...

The shards of crystal caught the cold light of the recessed kitchen ceiling, scattering tiny prisms across the imported Italian marble. I didn’t move immediately. I stayed crouched on the floor, the blood humming faintly in my ears, while Claudia’s sharp heels clicked away toward the foyer, her displeasure radiating like a physical chill.

The shards of crystal caught the cold light of the recessed kitchen ceil...

"Jessica..." I gasped, standing up so fast my head spun.

Carmen hadn't sent Evelyn down to the vault to get the drive for Sterling. She had used Sterling to break out of prison, used Evelyn as a distraction to draw Marcus and me into the basement, and now she was alone upstairs with my vulnerable wife and daughter.

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