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.

A deafening siren shrieked through Foundry Nine as fifty-year-old pressurized methane lines ruptured with explosive force.

A wall of pressurized, stagnant industrial gas hissed violently into the air around Lucian’s men. At the same instant, Vincent drew his concealed Kimber from his small-of-back holster and fired a single round directly into the cast-iron electrical breaker box on the wall.

The spark ignited the vapor.

*BOOM!*

A rolling wave of orange fire tore through the lower level, throwing Lucian and his front-line mercenaries across the concrete floor. The shockwave rattled the massive iron rafters, dislodging tons of rusted metal and sending heavy beams crashing down through the catwalks.

"Emma, run!" Vincent shouted, seizing her hand as the blast cleared.

They plunged through the billowing smoke toward the base of the cooling pit. Behind them, gunfire erupted in absolute chaos. Mateo’s team engaged the disoriented survivors, their weapons chattering in relentless three-round bursts.

Lucian staggered to his feet through the smoke, coughing blood, his face blackened by soot. "Kill them! Kill them both!" he roared, firing his sidearm wildly into the smog.

A bullet caught Vincent’s left bicep, tearing through the wool and grazing the muscle. He grunted in pain but didn't slow down, shoving Emma down the steel stairs into the subterranean maintenance chamber beneath the foundry floor.

They slammed the heavy blast door shut behind them, Vincent throwing the manual brass locking bar across the frame just as a barrage of automatic fire chewed into the outer steel plate.

The room fell into an eerie, muffled stillness.

The air down here was frigid, untouched by the fires above. Emma immediately pulled off her scarf, wrapping it tight around Vincent’s bleeding arm to staunch the flow.

"You're hit," she whispered, her hands trembling slightly as she tied the knot.

"Flesh wound," Vincent breathed, his eyes scanning the dimly lit underground bunker. "Look."

In the center of the underground chamber sat a massive vault door, forged from six-inch solid nickel-steel armor. In the center was an ancient mechanical tumbler, surrounded by five keyhole slots arranged in a pentagon.

And engraved on the front of the vault, in the hand-stamped steel of a bygone era, were the words: