Everyone watched Victoria raise her hand against a helpless elderly woman, but only one waitress dared to stop her—and seconds later, Chicago’s most powerful billionaire walked straight toward them.

The interior of the *K-179* smelled of diesel fuel, damp felt, and decades of stagnant, pressurized atmosphere. It was a technological relic from the late 1960s, extensively retrofitted with modern fiber-optic cables that snaked alongside brass gauges and Cyrillic warning placards.

Vorontsov lay on the deck, blood trickling from his split lip, but his cold, aristocratic arrogance remained unbroken. He looked up at Vincent, then at Emma, and laughed softly.

"You fools think you have won an engagement," he murmured, coughing lightly. "You have merely boarded a coffin that is already on a timer."

Emma stepped closer, aiming her rifle directly at his chest. "How do we stop the ballast tanks from blowing out the foundation pylons?"

"You cannot stop the automatic ballast purge," Vorontsov hissed. "When my heartbeat monitor registers below seventy beats per minute, or when the external mooring link is severed, the automated dive sequence activates. The vessel will flood its forward tubes, fire its auxiliary thrusters, and drag your precious Moretti Tower down into the trench of the lake bed. All of your grandfather's empire, Vincent... buried in thirty seconds."

Vincent knelt, ripping open Vorontsov’s coat to reveal a small biometric sensor taped over the old man's sternum, pulsing with a faint amber light. "He's telling the truth. It's a dead-man's switch tied to the sub's primary guidance system."

"There has to be a manual override," Emma said, scanning the bulkheads. She noticed a heavy steel door at the end of the narrow corridor marked with a triple-ring seal identical to the signet ring her grandmother had left her. "The Command Core. It’s through there."

"Emma, wait," Vincent cautioned, rising to his feet and pulling an emergency medical tourniquet from his belt to bind his injured arm. "Vorontsov came here with four men, but a vessel this size requires a skeleton crew of at least twenty to operate its nuclear reactors. Where are the rest of them?"

As if in answer to his question, a heavy mechanical thud echoed from the deep compartments forward of the bridge. The interior lights flickered from amber to emergency crimson. A voice, synthesized and cold, announced in flat English over the ship's intercom: