Chapter 14 - Breach of the Citadel
"Get down!" I roared, lunging across the desk and tackling Clara to the heavy carpet just as a volley of silenced gunfire chewed through the drywall behind us.
The sound was muffled, subsonic rounds designed to kill without triggering the building's acoustic gunshot-location sensors. Training took over instantly. My hand went to the tactical holster concealed beneath my jacket, drawing my Sig Sauer P320 in a single, fluid motion. I kicked my desk chair backward into the line of sight to create a diversion, rolling toward the heavy steel filing cabinets near the private panic room door.
"Marcus!" I shouted into the comm-link embedded in my collar. "Code Red! Executive floor compromised! Active shooters!"
"Copy, Boss! Security teams are moving up the service stairs now!" Marcus’s voice barked back, steady despite the distant sounds of shouting and structural chaos.
From the hallway came the heavy thud of combat boots and the unmistakable sound of close-quarters combat—grunts, breaking bone, and the suppressed *thip-thip* of professional operators engaging targets. My company wasn't staffed by desk jockeys; my security detail consisted of former tier-one operators who lived for days like this.
I hauled Clara up by the collar of her coat, shoving her behind the reinforced steel frame of the panic room door. "Stay down and keep your hands on your head," I ordered, my eyes scanning the ruined threshold of my office.
Two figures dressed in matte-black tactical gear, their faces obscured by balaclavas and night-vision goggles, stepped through the shattered glass of the doorway. They weren't common thugs; their stance was wide, their weapon discipline immaculate—central European mercenaries, the kind of corporate cleanup crew you hire when you want a problem permanently erased.
"Christian Vance," the lead operator said, his voice distorted by a throat-mic, speaking with a heavy Slavic accent. "Your mother sends her regards. And she wants the Blackwood ledger back."
"My mother is locked in a federal penitentiary three hundred miles away," I replied coldly, stepping out from behind the filing cabinet, my pistol leveled squarely at the center of his chest. "Which means she hired cheap help."
The mercenary didn't flinch. He raised his suppressed rifle, but he was half a second too slow.
I squeezed the trigger twice—*bang, bang*—placing two rounds directly into the ballistic ceramic plate of his vest, dropping him to his knees, followed by a disabling shot to his right shoulder. As his partner swung his barrel toward me, the heavy oak door to my private stairwell was kicked open, and Marcus stepped through, a tactical shotgun leveled at the second intruder's head.
"Drop it or lose your skull," Marcus growled.
The second operator looked at his wounded companion, looked at Marcus’s shotgun, and slowly let his rifle clatter to the polished concrete floor, raising his hands.
May you like
Within forty-eight hours, the building was crawling with federal agents, local police, and my own internal security audit teams. But the damage was done. The veil of peace we had lived under for three years had been violently ripped away. And worse—Emily was still at home, completely unprotected against whatever wave was coming next.
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