Chapter 32 - The Iron Sanctuary
"Chute, now!" I hissed.
I ripped the faux-wood paneling off the wall adjacent to Leo's closet, revealing the heavy pneumatic lever of the estate's concealed evacuation conduit. Installed during the Cold War by the original industrialist who built the Lake Forest fortress, it was lined with slick ballistic composite and angled at a sixty-degree descent directly into the sub-basement vault.
"Leo, you first. Land on your feet, roll onto the mats, and do not make a sound until I arrive," I ordered, staring straight into my eldest son's eyes.
The boy set his jaw, a mirror of the iron will that ran through Alexander's bloodline, and nodded. He slipped into the dark tube without a whimper. Chloe followed, then Maya, holding Lucas against her chest as they slid into the abyss.
Behind me, the nursery door gave way with an explosive crack. Sparks of molten steel sprayed across the hardwood floor.
I turned, leveled the sidearm at the breach, and emptied the remaining five rounds into the opening. A ragged scream from the dust confirmed a hit. Before the second operator could bring his rifle to bear through the smoke, I threw myself backward into the evacuation shaft.
The descent was a blur of frictionless acceleration. Cold air rushed past my face until my boots slammed hard into the industrial foam landing pads forty feet below the compound's foundations.
I rolled, came up on one knee, and slapped the emergency lock panel recessed into the vault's subterranean entrance. A six-ton hermetic blast door slid shut with the deep, grinding finality of a closing tomb. The locking bolts engaged—three solid cylinders of hardened tungsten sliding into the granite bedrock.
Inside, the sub-basement was bathed in the pale amber glow of independent battery banks. The children were huddled together against an armory locker, trembling but alive, their eyes wide as they looked at me.
"Is Papa coming?" Lucas whispered, his small fingers clutched around a toy car he had shoved into his pocket before the attack.
Before I could answer, the emergency tactical console against the concrete wall hummed to life. The optical-fiber lines—buried six feet under the concrete floorboards—were still feeding high-definition infrared images from the ground level.
On the master monitor, the library was a warzone of smoke and muzzle flashes. Alexander was fighting like a demon unchained. He had discarded his tailored suit jacket; his white shirt was streaked with soot and arterial spray. Using the fallen mahogany pillars as cover, he moved with terrifying economy—three hostiles lay motionless on the marble floor around him, while two more attempted to flank him through the French doors.
Then, through the camera above the grand entrance, another figure strode into the shattered estate.
He didn't wear tactical gear. He wore a cashmere overcoat, stepping deliberately over the bodies of his own mercenaries with polished oxfords. Behind him, being dragged like an obedient lapdog, was Julian Vance—his face pale with drunken hysteria, eyes darting around the carnage in horror.
May you like
The man in the overcoat stepped into the frame, look directly into the security camera lens, and smiled.
It was Baron Henrik von Berg—the chairman of the Geneva Sovereign Trust's disciplinary committee, and Eleanor Vance's secret overseas patron.
