Chapter 8 - The Siege of the Forty-Second Floor
"Where are they?" I roared, kicking my chair backward so hard it slammed into the walnut wall paneling.
The board members scattered like startled birds. Marcus was already on his feet, pulling a satellite phone from his briefcase to lock down the building's security grid.
“They are right here with me, Griffin,” Viktor’s voice hissed over the encrypted line. “In your little glass cage in the sky. Your private elevator is currently descending to the basement with a lock-out code. You have twenty minutes to drive down to the waterfront pier 42 and hand over the original port deeds, or I’ll let my men see how well those two little girls bounce off forty stories of air.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
"Marcus," I said, my voice ice-cold. "Override the elevator lock. Now."
"I can't, sir! They’ve hard-wired a master scrambler into the server room on thirty-eight. The lift is dead."
I didn't hesitate. I ripped off my suit jacket, tore open my shirt cuffs, and bolted for the internal service stairwell. Forty stories of concrete stairs. My lungs burned with every leap, my legs screaming from the sheer velocity of the ascent, but my mind was a white-hot laser of pure, unadulterated fury. Nobody touches my blood. Nobody touches my girls.
By the time I hit the forty-second floor, my chest was heaving and my hands were locked around the Sig Sauer I had drawn from my waistband.
The heavy steel fire door was chained from the outside with a heavy industrial padlock.
I didn't bother picking it. I raised the pistol and fired two suppressed rounds directly into the locking mechanism. The steel shrieked and shattered. I kicked the door open with a violent crash.
The penthouse was silent. The floor-to-ceiling windows were streaked with rain.
In the center of the white-velvet rug in the nursery, Viktor stood holding a silver letter opener to Hazel’s throat. Iris was huddled beside him, crying silently, her small hands clutching her one-eared stuffed rabbit.
Sloan was tied to a mahogany chair near the bar, her face bruised on one cheek where someone had struck her, her dark eyes blazing with a fury that could have melted steel.
"Ah, the billionaire hero arrives," Viktor sneered, turning slowly, the blade pressing a fraction of an inch deeper into Hazel’s skin. A tiny bead of crimson welled up against her pale throat.
My vision tunneled down to a single red dot between Viktor's eyes.
"Let her go, Viktor," I said, my voice dead, flat, and absolute. "You want the port deeds? They're in my breast pocket. Take them and walk out."
"Drop the gun first, Griffin," Viktor laughed, his breath smelling of stale tobacco. "Drop it or the little one loses her smile."
I lowered my left hand slowly, letting the pistol slip from my fingers. It hit the cashmere rug with a muffled thump.
Viktor’s smile widened. He relaxed his grip on Hazel for a fraction of a second, shifting his weight to reach for the papers in my coat.
That fraction of a second was all I needed.
Hazel—my brilliant, fearless daughter—didn't wait for me. Remembering the self-defense drills I had casually mentioned to her older cousins during a family dinner three years ago, she slammed her heavy rubber-soled boot directly down onto Viktor’s instep with all her eight-year-old weight.
Viktor cursed, stumbling backward as pain flared through his foot.
The letter opener slipped from his throat.
May you like
I moved across the room faster than a striking viper. I didn't use the gun. I used my bare hands—the hands of a boy who had fought his way out of the Tacoma shipyards and the man who had bought and sold empires. I drove my fist straight into Viktor’s solar plexus, doubled him over, and slammed his skull against the edge of the marble bar with a sickening crack.
He dropped like a sack of wet cement.
