Chapter 7 - The Breach
The heavy steel door of the safe room slammed shut and automatically engaged its magnetic locks just as heavy boots stomped across the nursery floor.
Lily held Ethan tight against her chest, pressing herself into the far corner of the windowless secure room. The baby let out a frightened wail, startled by the blaring alarms and the violence of the intrusion, but Lily buried his face gently against her shoulder, whispering soothingly into his hair while her own heart hammered like a trapped bird.
Through the integrated security monitor built into the safe room wall, Lily watched the main nursery space in grim, high-definition black-and-white.
Two men in tactical black gear, their faces hidden behind dark balaclavas, were tearing the room apart. They flipped over the rocking chair, ripped the mattress off the crib, and smashed the decorative wall mirrors, searching frantically for something.
"She’s not here! She must have used the internal chute!" one of the intruders barked into a tactical comms unit attached to his collar. "The panic room is sealed. We can't punch through these reinforced walls without thermal charges."
"Then use the charges!" a cold, furious voice crackled through the comms speaker.
Even through the distorted audio compression, Lily recognized that voice instantly. It was Harrison Vance—not Dr. Vance from the medical suite, but Harrison Vance, the ruthless head of acquisitions for a rival syndicate and Serena Montigue’s secret maternal uncle.
"If we use thermal charges, the whole upper floor goes up in flames, boss!" the mercenary argued.
"I don't care about the house!" Harrison screamed over the radio. "Victor Blackwood just seized our shipping terminals and captured Richard! If we don't recover the master ledger drives that Serena hid somewhere in that nursery, our entire organization goes down! Tear the walls apart brick by brick if you have to!"
Lily stared at the screen, her mind racing. The master ledger drives. Serena hadn't just been a spoiled socialite; she had been acting as the central nexus for her family’s syndicate, hiding incriminating financial drives right here in the Blackwood estate where nobody would ever suspect her. And now, her uncle was willing to burn the entire mansion to the ground to keep those secrets from falling into Victor’s hands.
Suddenly, the security monitor flickered.
In the hallway outside the nursery, the muffled sounds of gunfire echoed sharply.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The tactical intruders froze, turning their rifles toward the hallway door.
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A second later, heavy, authoritative footsteps thundered down the corridor. A familiar silhouette filled the doorway of the shattered nursery—tall, imposing, and radiating an aura of pure, unadulterated slaughter.
Victor Blackwood had returned. And he had brought hell with him.
