My husband walked into my hospital room after my near-fatal car accident—not to comfort me, but to demand that I get out of bed and stop costing him money. He tried to drag my broken body home until the door opened and he came face-to-face with the one man he never should have challenged: my father, a hidden special operations officer. / Chapter 13 / 60

Chapter 13 - The Lion's Den|

The gravel crunched beneath my braced boots as I limped toward the rusting iron gates.

Two men in dark raincoats stepped out from the security booth, their hands resting on the grips of automatic pistols holstered at their hips. One of them held up a powerful tactical flashlight, blinding me with its harsh white beam.

"Stop right there," the guard commanded. "State your name."

"Audrey Hayes," I said, my voice carrying clearly through the sound of falling rain. "Tell Arthur Vance I'm here."

The guard pulled a radio from his vest. "Target is at the main gate. She's alone."

A pause of heavy static, then a voice replied: "Search her and bring her up."

Rough hands patted down my jacket, missing the small cylinder tucked expertly into the lined inner seam of my collar. They shoved the heavy iron gate open and escorted me across the muddy yard toward the towering steel doors of the main warehouse.

Inside, the warehouse was a cavernous, echoing vault filled with shipping containers, heavy machinery, and rows of black server racks glowing with red and blue LED lights.

Standing on a raised steel catwalk twenty feet above the ground stood Arthur Vance.

He looked older than he had in the photographs my father had shown me—his hair entirely silver, his face lined with sharp, arrogant angles. He wore an expensive wool overcoat, resting both hands on a silver-topped walking cane.

"Audrey," Vance's voice echoed through the vast space, smooth and cultured. "You have your father's stubbornness. I was half-expecting Daniel to send a military strike team."

"Where is my daughter?" I demanded, stopping near the center of the warehouse floor, rain dripping from my hood onto the concrete.

Vance smiled faintly, gesturing with his cane toward the second-floor glass control room.

Through the rain-streaked window, I saw Chloe sitting in a chair, guarded by a heavy-set man holding an assault rifle.

"She's perfectly unharmed," Vance said. "For now. But business comes first, my dear. Step over to the server terminal on your left."

I looked toward a sleek metal desk positioned near the central server racks. A digital blood analyzer sat on the surface, its blue screen glowing with a prompt: AWAITING BIOMETRIC VERIFICATION.