Chapter 100 - Sovereign Retribution
"Perimeter breached!" Kane screamed from the foyer. "Thermal sensors show sixty men moving through the south gardens! They have armored personnel carriers on the road!"
Vincent was on his feet in an instant, racking the slide of his combat rifle. "Kane! Pull all men back to the grand staircase. Establish a kill-zone in the foyer. Nobody passes the inner archway!"
"Vincent, look out the terrace window," Emma said, her voice dropping to a tense whisper.
Vincent stepped to the heavy velvet drapes and parted them an inch. Through the blizzard, six armored gunboats were cutting through the ice sheets on Lake Michigan, their high-intensity searchlights painting the bluff below the mansion in brilliant white beams. Jonathan Vance had not merely surrounded the estate by land; he had cut off any escape by water.
"We don't need an escape," Elena Moretti said calmly, standing up from her chair with the aid of her cane. She walked toward the grand mantle above the fireplace, reaching behind an oil painting of the family’s Sicilian estate to pull a concealed brass lever.
A low hiss of hydraulics echoed from the floor beneath them as a section of the oak flooring retracted, revealing an ancient, spiraling iron staircase leading down into the bedrock beneath the house.
"What is that?" Emma asked.
"The real Core access," Elena said, looking directly at Vincent. "The vault at the lakefront was the decoy, Vincent. Marcus Ward never trusted the syndicate. He knew that one day, Jonathan Vance would come for the ledger. So he built the primary transmitter here, beneath the only house in the city that had never fallen to an enemy assault."
Elena turned to Emma. "Down there is the terminal. If you upload Marcus’s master sequence, you don't just clear the Vanguard's funds—you broadcast their entire operational database to every intelligence agency, news outlet, and judicial court on earth. You burn them to ash."
"And what happens to the Moretti empire?" Emma asked, looking at Vincent. "Your family's assets are tied to that network. If I burn them, Vincent loses everything."
Vincent walked over to Emma, his eyes dark, steady, and resolute. He reached out, his hand gently cupping the back of her neck.
"Let it burn," Vincent said without a single tremor of regret. "I built this empire once with my bare hands. I can build it again. But you... you finish what your grandfather started."
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A massive explosion blew the front double doors off their hinges, showering the foyer in splinters and fire. Automatic gunfire erupted in a deafening crescendo as Kane’s men engaged the Vanguard’s vanguard force in the entrance hall.
"Go!" Vincent roared, shoving Emma toward the spiral stairs. "Go with Elena! I'll hold the hall!"
