Chapter 6 - The Trap Shuts
"Marcus! Get out!" Julian yelled, lunging toward the shrinking gap between the closing titanium vault doors.
Marcus threw himself backward into the lobby, barely clearing the threshold as the six-ton vault door slammed shut with a deafening thud, the magnetic seals hissing into place. Julian and Lyra were sealed inside the impenetrable private vault.
The lights inside the vault flickered from warm yellow to an eerie crimson emergency glow. The built-in intercom system crackled to life, followed by a familiar, composed voice that made Julian’s jaw clench until his teeth ached.
"You always were too sentimental for your own good, Julian," Victoria said through the speaker, her tone dripping with mock pity. "Did you really think the Sovereign Depository wasn't tied directly to my father's surveillance network? The moment your little stray scanned her hand, an automated lock-down protocol was triggered."
Julian stepped toward the speaker grille set into the ceiling. "Victoria, this is madness. You forged an entire death certificate! Clara was a newborn infant! How could you and your father orchestrate an assassination of an heir twenty years ago?"
"Assassination? Oh, please," Victoria chuckled softly. "Assassinations are messy and create martyrs. We simply removed her. Your father was bankrupt, Julian. The great House of Alistair was drowning in debt. My family bailed them out under one condition: that the bloodline consolidate through me. But as long as Clara existed with a superior legal claim to the ancestral land grant, my family couldn't secure the mining leases."
Lyra stepped up beside Julian, her voice steadying despite the terror in her eyes. "You let a woman raise me in absolute poverty while you built an empire on stolen ground."
"You should thank me, Clara," Victoria replied callously. "You got to live a quiet, unremarkable life. But coming to the wedding? Handing Julian that photograph in front of the board of directors? That was an unforgivable mistake. The ventilation in that vault will shut off in exactly forty-five minutes. When the seals open in the morning, they will find the prodigal heir tragically suffocated alongside her rebellious brother."
The intercom clicked off, leaving behind the terrifying hum of dying air systems. The gentle breeze from the ceiling vents died down, replaced by a suffocating stillness.
"We have forty-five minutes," Lyra breathed, her chest tightening as the reality settled in.
"No," Julian said, his eyes scanning the thumb drive in his hand. "We have as much time as this drive gives us. My mother didn't just hide evidence in here; she built an escape."
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He inserted the thumb drive into the vault's terminal computer. A schematic of the building appeared, highlighting an obsolete maintenance hatch behind the walnut wall panels. But beside the schematic, a video file began auto-playing.
The face of Julian’s father, Harrison Alistair, filled the screen—recorded mere days ago.
