Chapter 6 - The Mask SlipsOutside the reinforced glass of the panic room, the masked man in the Armani suit stopped typing on his tactical laptop.
He slowly straightened up, turned around, and walked right up to the observation glass. He didn't look like a common thug; his movements possessed an eerie, graceful familiarity that sent a sudden, cold shiver down William’s spine.
The man reached up, gripped the edge of his carbon-fiber mask, and pulled it off.
Marcus let out a sharp gasp of pure disbelief.
It was Julian Vance. Marcus’s own younger brother.
William stared through the glass, his breath catching in his throat. Julian—his trusted chief of operations, the man William had personally mentored, paid through Ivy League business school, and treated like a younger brother—was standing there, smiling a cold, dead smile.
"Julian?" Marcus choked out, pressing his face against the glass. "Are you out of your mind? What have you done?"
Julian didn't look at Marcus. His eyes were fixed entirely on William Harrison through the thick glass. He tapped a key on his wrist-comm, establishing an audio link through the panic room’s intercom system.
Hiss.
"Hello, William," Julian’s voice echoed smoothly inside the panic room, stripped of all warmth. "Surprised?"
"Disappointed, Julian," William replied, his voice dropping into an icy, steady register. "You had a seat on the board. You were set to inherit my corporate portfolio in five years. Why throw it all away for Jonathan Sterling?"
Julian laughed—a harsh, bitter sound that bounced off the steel walls. "Inherit? You were never going to step down, William. You built this empire like a god on a mountain, watching everyone else crawl in the dirt. Five years? Ten years? I would have been an old man by the time you finally decided to loosen your grip."
"So you sold your soul to Sterling?" Marcus roared, slamming his fist against the glass. "You put a hit on the boss? And you didn't care that your own nephew—that Leo almost got caught in the crossfire?"
Julian’s eyes flickered toward ten-year-old Leo, who was trembling behind Marcus. For a split second, a flash of genuine guilt crossed Julian’s face—before it was instantly replaced by a mask of ruthless ambition.
"Collateral damage, brother," Julian said coldly. "The boy shouldn't have followed me up the stairs. But children have a habit of wandering where they don't belong."
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William’s eyes narrowed into slits. "You're too late, Julian. Look at the console. Protocol Zero is primed. If you don't walk out of this building right now, I press the button, and Sterling gets nothing. A trillion-dollar empire turns to dust in three seconds."
Julian smiled, a slow, terrifying grin that reached his eyes. "Go ahead, William. Press it."
