Chapter 6 - The Audit of Victor Vance
The second operative didn't try a second frontal breach. Professionals don't make the same mistake twice; they adapt, flank, and suffocate.
I stayed flat against the rough fieldstone of the fireplace hearth, my breathing slow and measured, the shotgun locked into my shoulder. Through the shattered slats of the front door, the heavy smell of cordite and burning pine drifted into the room. Outside, the wind howled louder, masking the crunch of boots on fresh snow.
Smart, I thought. He’s moving to the western deck.
The western deck had a sliding glass door—bulletproof, reinforced laminate, but set into a wooden frame that was vulnerable to a localized thermic lance.
I didn't wait for him to cut through the glass.
I crawled low across the hardwood floor, keeping beneath the window line, and moved toward the dark hallway leading to the master bedroom. I pushed the door open just an inch.
Liam and Lucas were huddled under the heavy oak bed frame, their small figures silhouetted against the ambient moonlight filtering through the high window. Liam had his arms wrapped tightly around Lucas, his eyes wide and fixed on the crack in the door.
“Stay down,” I whispered fiercely, my voice barely audible. “I’m right here.”
Liam gave a single, sharp nod.
I backed away from the bedroom door, slipped into the narrow pantry off the kitchen, and popped the secondary latch on the service exit that led down into the subterranean utility cellar. I didn't go down—I went up.
Using the narrow maintenance ladder built into the stone chimney chase, I hauled myself quietly up to the rafter loft overlooking the main living room. From twenty feet up in the shadows of the exposed timber beams, I had a complete, unobstructed panoramic view of the entire ground floor.
Below me, the sliding glass door on the western deck hissed as a thermic lance ate through the latch. A shower of white-hot sparks cascaded onto the interior rug.
A gloved hand reached through the melted aperture, slid the lock open, and a heavy-set figure in tactical black gear stepped into the room, rifle raised, scanning the shadows with a night-vision monocular mounted to his helmet.
He didn't look up.
Professional. Methodical. Fatal mistake.
I didn't waste a shell. I dropped straight out of the rafters, landing squarely on his back with my full weight, driving him face-first into the hardwood floor with a bone-crunching impact that knocked the wind out of his lungs in a violent wheeze.
His rifle clattered across the room. Before he could reach for the sidearm strapped to his tactical vest, I jammed the barrel of the Remington hard against the base of his skull.
“Don't move,” I whispered, my voice dripping with an ice-cold lethality that had nothing to do with corporate boardrooms and everything to do with survival. “Who sent you?”
The operative groaned, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floorboards. “Vance... protocol... you’re dead anyway, Miller...”
“Vance is in Montreal,” I said, pressing the barrel harder. “Or so he thinks. Where is Emma?”
The man let out a wet, raspy laugh. “You... you think Vance is running the show? Look at your own portfolio, Miller. Look at who bought your debt three months ago.”
My stomach dropped with the force of a falling elevator.
I didn't loosen my grip, but my mind raced backward through every transaction, every offshore shell company, every hostile merger I had executed in the last twelve months.
“Name,” I hissed.
“Sterling,” the operative choked out, his eyes rolling back. “Arthur Sterling.”
The name hit me like a physical blow. Arthur Sterling—the London-based mega-investor, the patriarch of Sterling Global Holdings, the man whose multi-billion-dollar portfolio I had systematically dismantled and absorbed piece by piece over the last five years.
Sterling didn't just want to ruin me financially. He wanted to wipe my bloodline off the face of the earth.
And Emma wasn't just a hostage. She was the bait in a trap designed to draw me out into the open, far away from my lawyers, my security teams, and my corporate fortress.
I slammed the butt of the shotgun into the back of the operative’s helmet, rendering him instantly unconscious. I bound his hands and feet with heavy industrial zip-ties from my utility belt, dragged him down into the cold cellar, and bolted the iron door from the outside.
Then I walked back upstairs to the computer terminal, booted the encrypted satellite link, and dialed Marcus’s direct emergency line.
“Marcus,” I said, when the line connected on the first ring. “Forget Victor Vance. Pull every financial record on Arthur Sterling for the last ten years. I want his offshore accounts, his private jet transponder logs, and his primary residence.”
“Sterling?” Marcus’s voice sounded incredulous. “Arthur Sterling is on the board of half the central banks in Europe. You can't just—”.
“Watch me,” I interrupted, my voice flat, cold, and absolute. “He took Emma. He played a high-stakes game with the wrong family.”
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“Where are you going, Jason?”
“London,” I said, looking toward the master bedroom door where my two sons were waiting in the dark. “Book the Gulfstream. We’re going to audit a billionaire.”
