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Stepping up to my keypad, I gave Leon the signal to start entering his code. The system beeped, accepting the individual entries before the retinal scanner dinged. We leaned forward, our right eyes focused on the scanner.
“Wait—” Mark shouted over the comm line. It was too late. The scanner had already imprinted our retinas. The building rumbled beneath our feet, concrete shifting as an explosion rang out above our heads.
“Your retinal scan triggered the building’s self-destruct mechanism,” Mark cried. “Every one of the devices has been activated. You have less than sixty seconds to get the hell out of there.”
“Motherfucker,” I cursed. The door to the vault had already opened. It was our only chance. “Everyone inside the vault. Now.”
The sound of falling rubble was deafening. “Mark, tell Kristian to get Ava away from the building or they’ll be caught in the collapse.”
Static.
“Mark.”
Shit.
“Mark!”
“Son,” my father urged from the doorway. “Your wife is strong. She will be fine. Get inside before you go down with the ship.”
Cursing, I strode quickly through the door, helping my father pull it closed. The electronic click of the lock was music to my ears.
“We should be safe in here,” Vas assured everyone.
“Should be?” Andrei frowned.
“Well,” Vas smirked grimly, “we haven’t exactly tested it out before.”
Andrei chuckled.
Then the last few bombs detonated.
Hindsight was a bitch. In the early days of construction, we’d implanted explosive devices into the major fault lines of the building so that if worse came to worse, the building could be reduced to a pile of ash and rubble. Along with any evidence.
Not that I was careless.
No one outside my organization knew about those devices. There were only a handful of men who were aware of them. One of them had to be the mole.
Fuck.
The vault rumbled and shook as steel and concrete rained down on top of us. For the first time in years, I prayed. I prayed that the vault would hold under the weight of the upper building’s collapse, and I prayed that my wife managed to get free of the collapse zone.
I wasn’t a religious man, but in that moment, as the lights flickered and stalled, leaving us in an embankment of darkness, I’d pray to whoever would listen.
CHAPTERFIVE
Agony was tearing at my chest like a wild animal.
Three days.
Ava had already been missing for three days without any trace of where she had gone. The tracker Vas had installed in her necklace was silent. Not even a blip. Footage from our security satellite showed her abduction just minutes after the building collapse, but there was no way to gain facial images. They were too distorted.
“Fuck,” I roared, sweeping my hand across the desk. Glass shattered, screens cracked, and papers scattered under the weight of my frustration. The monster inside me wanted blood. When I got my hands on whoever had betrayed us, on whoever had taken my wife, I would rip them apart piece by piece and bathe in their blood.
“You know—” I looked up to see Vas leaning against the doorframe of my office. “There was some good whiskey in that glass. Expensive too.” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “What a waste.”
My lips curled in a sneer, and I shot him an icy glare. “Stuff it,” I grumbled.
Vas shrugged. “I’m just saying,” he advised with a smartass smile. “Kavanaugh won’t be too happy that you’re destroying his things.”
