The metal stairs seemed to stretch endlessly into the cold concrete bowels of the skyscraper. Elena clutched the infant tightly against her chest, the rhythmic thud of her own pulse drowning out the mechanical hum of the building’s emergency systems. Helena was in the car. The man on the line—the voice she had trusted, the mastermind behind the forged records and the Geneva vault—was sitting mere floors away with her greatest enemy.
A sharp, metallic screech echoed from the floor above, followed by the dull thud of a boot kicking against the reinforced service door. They had found the stairwell.
«Elena, talk to me,» the voice on the phone commanded, the urgency cutting through the static. «The state police just breached the penthouse. You have less than ninety seconds before they lock down the sub-basement elevators.»
«I’m at the landing for level negative three,» Elena whispered fiercely, her boots slamming onto the final grating of the staircase. She shoved open the heavy fire exit door, stepping out into the dim, fluorescent-lit gloom of the underground parking garage.
Rows of luxury sedans lined the concrete pillars, casting long, eerie shadows. Twenty yards ahead, idling in front of a concrete support column, sat a matte-black Mercedes with tinted windows and its headlights extinguished.
Elena sprinted toward it, her breath pluming in the freezing subterranean air. Before she could reach the rear passenger door, it clicked open from the inside.
Helena sat in the leather-upholstered backseat, perfectly composed, wearing her signature cashmere coat without a single speck of dust or blood. Her lips curved into a slow, razor-thin smile as she looked down at the infant in Elena’s arms.
«Well, look who finally decided to join us,» Helena purred, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. «Did you really think you could play a high-stakes game of chess when you don’t even know who owns the board, my dear?»
Elena froze halfway to the vehicle, her muscles locked in pure defiance. «Where is he?» she demanded, refusing to step closer. «Where is the man who was just talking to me?»
Helena chuckled, raising a slender hand to tap gently against the leather headrest of the driver’s seat. The driver slowly turned his head, the interior dome light casting a sharp glare over a familiar, smiling profile. It wasn’t an operative. It wasn’t a stranger.
It was Lucas’s legal counsel, Arthur, holding a heavy-caliber silencer in his right hand, resting casually against the steering wheel.
«Surprise, Elena,» Arthur smiled smoothly, his eyes flashing with a cold, terrifying calculation. «The ten million in Geneva? It’s sitting in my account. And the baby… well, he was never Lucas’s leverage to use.»
Before Elena could process the betrayal, the garage doors behind her violently rattled open, and the blinding headlights of three tactical police vehicles flooded the sector, trapping them in a cage of chrome and steel.