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 14 / 60

Chapter 14 - The Trigger|

I walked slowly toward the metal desk, making a show of my limp, wincing with every step as if my body was on the verge of collapsing.

On the catwalk above, three armed guards tracked my movements with their rifles, their lasers painting red dots across the concrete floor around my feet.

I reached the desk and looked up at Vance.

"My father killed every man who helped you hurt my mother," I said, keeping my voice steady. "What makes you think you're going to escape him?"

Vance laughed—a dry, humorless sound that echoed off the steel rafters. "Your father is an relic, Audrey. A dinosaur fighting a war with thirty-year-old tactics. I own the servers, I own the politicians, and once I have your mother's master ledger, I will own every intelligence agency on this continent."

"He's not a relic," I whispered. "He's right behind you."

Vance's smile vanished.

Before he could react, I pulled the sleek cylinder from my collar, jammed it directly into the blood analyzer's digital port, and slammed my hand down on the activation lever.

BZZZZZZT.

A violent shower of white sparks erupted from the analyzer as the synthetic virus uploaded directly into the master mainframe.

Instantly, every overhead floodlight in the warehouse blew out with a series of loud pops. The glowing server racks went pitch black. Emergency sirens began blaring through the darkness as red emergency backup lights flickered on, casting long, blood-red shadows across the room.

CRACK!

The glass window of the second-floor control room shattered violently as Elena's sniper round took out the guard standing beside Chloe.

"Go! Go! Go!" my father's voice bellowed from the dark rafters above the catwalk.

Flashbang grenades detonated across the catwalk in a blinding, deafening burst of white light and thunderous explosions. Vance's guards screamed as they were thrown off balance, their rifles firing wildly into the ceiling.