Chapter 16 - The Breach at Zero-Thirty
Two miles down the mountain slope, Lily sprinted through the blinding snowstorm, her breath coming in ragged, freezing gasps. The tactical vest kept her core warm, but the sub-zero wind cut through her gloves like tiny glass shards.
She pressed the comms earpiece linked to Marcus’s frequency.
"Marcus, report! Do you copy?" Lily panted, ducking behind a thick cluster of pine trees as a automated searchlight swept overhead.
"We’re pinned down at the ravine, Lily!" Marcus’s voice crackled through the static, punctuated by the sharp, deafening pop of incoming sniper fire. "Thorne’s automated defense grid is locking down the entire upper ridge. You cannot approach that fortress alone—it’s a meat grinder!"
"I’m already past the outer perimeter fence," Lily replied fiercely, her voice unwavering. "Victor is inside alone. I am not turning back."
Before Marcus could argue, Lily cut the transmission. She checked the magazine of her Sig Sauer pistol, ensuring a round was chambered, and pushed forward up the steep, snow-covered rock face toward the rear maintenance service hatch of the fortress.
She had spent six months watching over Victor’s son in the shadows of the Blackwood mansion. She had survived a brutal kick to the stomach from a sociopathic socialite, stared down armed intruders in a burning nursery, and crossed an ocean for a man who had taught her what true protection looked like. She wasn't going to let some ghost from the past destroy everything they had built.
Reaching the heavy steel maintenance door, Lily pulled a small electronic bypass kit Marcus had given her out of her tactical pouch. Her hands shook slightly from the adrenaline and the bitter cold, but her focus remained absolute.
May you like
Beep. Beep. Click.
The heavy magnetic lock disengaged with a soft pneumatic hiss. Lily pulled the door open and slipped into the dark, sterile bowels of the Swiss fortress.
