Chapter 34 - The Red Ledger Protocol
Desperation makes monsters of ordinary people, but it turns true monsters into rabid beasts.
Eleanor didn't reach for a pen or a phone. From beneath the folds of her couture evening jacket, she pulled a small, silver derringer—a weapon she must have concealed when Julianne first disarmed her guards in the elevator foyer.
"Nobody takes my empire!" Eleanor shrieked.
*BANG.*
The deafening report inside the enclosed glass room was like a grenade detonating.
The bullet didn't hit Elena. It struck the central terminal console, punching through the reinforced glass casing and sending a shower of sparks and blue electrical arcs vomiting across the mahogany table.
"You stupid bitch!" Julianne screamed.
In that split second of deafening chaos, Nicholas moved with blinding speed. He didn't dive for cover. He didn't reach for Elena.
He seized Julianne’s gun arm, twisting her wrist with an audible, sickening *snap*. Julianne shrieked in agony as the silenced pistol fell from her limp fingers. Nicholas caught the weapon mid-air, spun, and fired twice into the ceiling.
*THWIP. THWIP.*
The high-pressure fire suppression system above us engaged instantly. A dense cloud of halon gas and freezing mist hissed violently from the ceiling nozzles, blinding the room in a swirling vortex of white vapor.
"Clara! Down!" Nicholas’s roar cut through the deafening alarm sirens.
I didn't wait to be told twice. I dropped to the floor, rolling beneath the heavy conference table just as Elena drew a weapon from inside her trench coat and opened fire into the fog.
Rounds tore through the leather executive chairs above me, stuffing and fragments of wood raining down on my shoulders. Eleanor was screaming somewhere to my left—a high, shrill wail of animal panic.
A hand reached through the mist and grabbed my jacket collar.
I gasped, thrashing with all my might, bringing my elbow back with every ounce of fury I possessed. My elbow connected with solid muscle, eliciting a sharp grunt.
"Clara, stop! It's me!" Nicholas’s voice grated against my ear. His fingers clamped around my wrist like iron bands, pulling me out from under the table.
"Don't touch me!" I sobbed, struggling against his grip even as bullets chewed through the glass behind us. "You used me! You set this up!"
"I set it up to draw them both into the open!" Nicholas hissed, his breath hot against my cheek as he dragged me across the slick floor toward the emergency fire exit beside the elevator bank. "Elena has been hunting you since you were eighteen! The moment Eleanor cut your braid, Elena’s network went live! If I hadn't brought you here under controlled conditions, her mercenaries would have butchered you in your sleep!"
"You're lying!"
"If I wanted you dead, I would have let Julianne pull the trigger!" he shouted over the blaring siren.
Behind us, a voice echoed through the halon fog—cold, amplified, and dripping with venom.
"Lock the blast doors," Elena commanded over the building’s internal comms system. "Seal the eightieth floor. Nobody leaves this room alive until I have that girl’s hands."
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Across the room, the heavy steel security shutters began descending over the stairwells and elevator shafts with a groaning screech of hydraulic power.
"Move!" Nicholas hauled me to my feet, shoving me through the narrowing gap of the fire escape door just as the steel plate slammed down behind us, sealing us into the concrete stairwell.
