Chapter 4 - THE PENTHOUSE BREACH
At 2:00 AM, the glass-and-steel tower of the Drake Financial Building glowed against the rainy Manhattan sky.
Inside the top-floor penthouse, seventy stories above the streets, classical music played over champagne glasses as Victor Vance-Drake entertained a room full of wealthy foreign syndicate partners.
He was a tall man in his late forties, wearing a tailored tuxedo, sipping scotch with Julian Cole standing silently behind him like a dark shadow.
"Is the paperwork clean, Julian?" Victor whispered, turning toward his fixer.
"Clean," Julian replied cold-faced. "The girl won't wake up to talk, and the police are chasing phantom street robbers. By midnight tomorrow, the money is yours."
Suddenly, the lights in the entire fifty-story tower went completely black.
The ambient classical music cut off mid-note. The heavy glass windows rattled as emergency generators failed to kick in.
"What the hell?" Victor grumbled, setting down his glass. "Julian, check the power grid."
Before Julian could move, the heavy reinforced double doors of the penthouse erupted inward with a deafening boom.
Flashbang grenades bounced across the polished marble floor, detonating in a blinding flash of white light and thunderous sound.
Panic exploded through the high-society crowd as screams echoed through the dark room.
Through the smoke, four dark figures wearing tactical gear and night-vision goggles moved with terrifying speed and precision.
Within twelve seconds, Victor’s six armed private security guards were systematically disarmed, pinned to the floor, and zip-tied before they could even draw their weapons.
When the smoke cleared, I stepped into the center of the penthouse room, pulling down my ballistic mask.
Victor backed up against his mahogany bar, his eyes wide with wild terror as he recognized my face.
"Thomas?!" he gasped, his voice cracking. "You... you're supposed to be overseas!"
"I came back for my daughter's birthday, Victor," I said, walking toward him with slow, deliberate steps.
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Julian Cole tried to draw a hidden weapon from his jacket, but Bull hit him with a brutal rifle-butt strike across the jaw, sending the ex-mercenary crashing unconscious into a glass coffee table.
I grabbed Victor by the collar of his thousand-dollar tux, lifting him off his feet, and slammed him against the glass window overlooking the sheer drop to the street below.
