Chapter 2 - GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN DEAD
The ballroom erupted into sheer, shrieking bedlam, but the world around Damian Cross turned dead silent.
“Whose credentials?” Damian had asked.
“Her badge,” Marcus, the head of private security, replied without flinching. His hand was already hovering over the matte-black grip of his concealed firearm, his eyes locked onto mine with cold, predatory efficiency.
Every drop of warmth drained from my limbs. The marble beneath my silver heels felt like thin ice ready to shatter over black water. Five hundred elite guests were shoving toward the exit doors as private guards formed a defensive wall around the stage, yet all I could hear was the harsh, rapid thumping of my own pulse in my ears.
“Damian, that’s impossible,” I said, my voice shaking despite every ounce of clinical discipline I possessed. “My badge is clipped to my locker inside the staff lounge at Crosswell. I haven’t unlocked the restricted narcotics cabinet in three weeks. The last dose I logged was potassium chloride for an end-stage arrhythmia case.”
Damian didn’t yell. He didn’t draw a weapon. That was the most terrifying part about him. When Damian Cross lost his temper, he didn't scream; he turned into carved granite. His dark eyes searched my face, scanning for a tremor in my lip, a darting gaze, the autonomic tells of a traitor. His fingers, which had rested against my lower spine only minutes ago with an electric, possessive warmth, now dropped away completely.
“Marcus,” Damian said, his baritone slicing through the panic of the stampeding crowd. “Lock down the north service elevator. Clear the underground garage. Put her in the armored sedan.”
“Damian, please listen to me!” I gasped as Marcus’s heavy hand clamped around my upper arm. The silk of my crimson dress offered no protection against his iron grip. “I just saved your life! Why would I warn you about the champagne if I stole the toxin to poison it?”
“Because a martyr gets closer to the king than an assassin,” Marcus growled in my ear, shoving me toward the private service corridor behind the heavy velvet drapes.
Damian picked up the shattered champagne glass and the glass vial from the floor with a silk handkerchief. He didn't look at me as they dragged me away. “We don’t execute anyone based on a timestamp, Marcus. But nobody leaves the compound until I know why my nurse’s digital footprint matches the poison aimed at my throat.”
Ten minutes later, I was thrown into the back of a black Maybach with reinforced bulletproof glass. Two armed guards sat in front, separated by a steel partition. Marcus sat across from me, a tablet balanced on his knee, tapping through digital access logs. The gala was miles behind us now, the Boston skyline blurring past the rain-streaked windows. We were heading south, away from the city lights, toward the private coastal estate Damian used for interrogations.
“You’re making a mistake,” I whispered, hugging my arms against the chill of the leather seats. My hands were trembling violently. “Someone cloned my keycard. The RFID chips in those older badges are vulnerable to high-frequency scanners. Anyone standing within two feet of me at the clinic could have duplicated it.”
Marcus didn’t look up from his screen. “The door to Vault B requires a badge swipe and a six-digit personal PIN, Miss Vance. Entered at 4:18 PM today. Your shift ended at four. Security cameras outside the hallway experienced a thirty-second power loop at 4:17 PM. Whoever walked in knew the blind spots, knew the code, and used your credentials.”
My breath hitched. The six-digit PIN was my late mother’s birthday. I had never written it down. I had never told a soul.
Before I could process the horror of that realization, the Maybach suddenly swerved violently to the left. The screech of tires tore through the quiet night.
A deafening metallic crunch shattered the front cabin. A heavy utility truck, headlights completely blacked out, had barreled through an intersection, smashing directly into our front bumper and spinning our two-ton armored car across three lanes of wet asphalt.
The vehicle slammed into a concrete divider, the airbags deploying with an explosive pop. Smoke poured into the cabin. My head cracked against the window frame, stars bursting behind my eyelids as blood trickled down my temple, warm and sticky against my cheek.
“Ambush!” Marcus roared, coughing through the powder of the airbags. He kicked his door open, drawing his sidearm. Outside, the night air was pierced by the rapid, rhythmic chatter of automatic gunfire.
“Stay down!” he barked at me, diving out into the ditch to return fire.
I curled into the footwell, my ears ringing, my crimson dress tearing against the broken trim. Through the shattered rear windshield, I saw them. Four men wearing tactical vests and ballistic masks, advancing with military precision through the darkness. On the sleeve of the lead shooter was a distinct patch: a two-headed viper coiled around an iron dagger.
The Moretti syndicate. Damian’s bitterest rivals in the Northeast territory.
They weren't here to rescue me. They were here to silence me before Damian could interrogate me.
A gloved hand reached through the broken window, grabbing a fistful of my hair. I cried out, kicking with my heel, catching the attacker squarely in the throat through his tactical collar. He gagged, stumbling backward. I scrambled through the opposite door, tumbling onto the wet asphalt, the freezing rain drenching my gown.
Gunfire echoed around me. Marcus took two bullets to the chest and collapsed against the guardrail, gasping for breath. The lead gunman stepped over him, racking the slide of a combat shotgun, aiming the barrel directly between my eyes.
“Clean up the loose end,” the shooter muttered.
I froze, staring down the black bore of the barrel, unable to run, unable to scream.
Then, a high-caliber rifle shot cracked through the storm like thunder. The shooter’s head snapped back, his body collapsing instantly onto the road.
Down the highway, a sleek matte-black sports car roared out of the darkness, drifting sideways across the lanes and throwing up a wall of spray. The driver’s door flew open before the vehicle had even completely stopped.
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Damian Cross stepped out into the rain, a smoking semi-automatic rifle in his grip, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his white dress shirt soaked through and clinging to his chest. His eyes locked onto mine through the muzzle flash of the second wave of attackers.
“Elena!” his roar tore through the gunfire.
