Chapter 4 - The Puppet Master
From the shadowed doorway of the adjoining library stepped a woman.
She was in her late forties, dressed in an immaculate charcoal power suit, her blonde hair cut into a sharp, chin-length bob. Her features were strikingly similar to Julian Vance’s, but her eyes held none of Julian’s cowardly weakness. They were like black glass, reflecting nothing but razor-sharp calculation.
"Helena," Matteo murmured, his weapon shifting instantly toward her chest.
Helena Vance. Julian’s mother. The brilliant corporate architect of Vance Global whom the federal authorities had believed died in a yachting accident in the Caribbean five years ago.
"Hello, Matteo," Helena said, her voice smooth and devoid of tremor, her silver-plated revolver resting casually in her hand. "You look remarkably healthy for a man who spent the last forty-eight hours running through burning timber."
"You faked your death," Anna said, stepping slightly in front of Matteo to draw Helena’s line of sight. "You let your own son go to prison."
"Julian was weak," Helena said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "He was a petulant boy who thought violence was a game of public humiliation. He ruined thirty years of infrastructure because he couldn't control a maid."
Helena's cold eyes locked onto Anna with venomous hatred. "He let you cut into our profits, our name, our legacy. Arthur thought he could fix it with old-world brute force. He died for his arrogance. But I don't play games with pride, Anna. I play games with capital."
"And you murdered Hayes," Matteo stated coldly.
"Hayes was a bureaucrat who thought a piece of paper could hold back the tides of global logistics," Helena replied. "With him gone, the original sealed indictments against me have vanished from the federal servers. The Vance empire belongs to me again. All I need are the digital signatures on that drive Vincent holds in his hand."
"I'm not giving you the drive, Helena," Vincent Vance said quietly from behind his desk. "Your greed has filled enough graves."
Helena smiled—a cold, terrifying stretch of red lips. "You always were a disappointment, Vincent."
A red laser dot suddenly appeared on Vincent Vance’s forehead.
Before Matteo or Anna could yell a warning, a suppressed shot shattered the high window behind the desk. Vincent's head snapped back, and the elderly man slumped forward onto his paperwork, blood pooling over the green banker's lamp.
"Drive's mine," Helena said.
Matteo fired twice, the heavy rounds chewing into the mahogany doorframe as Helena dove back into the library with unnatural speed.
Anna lunged across the desk, grabbing the titanium flash drive from Vincent's lifeless hand just as two smoke grenades bounced into the office from the hallway.
White, suffocating gas erupted in thick billows.
Through the haze, heavy footsteps charged from the corridor. Matteo grabbed Anna by the collar of her coat, pulling her toward the private executive elevator behind the bookshelves.
"Keycard!" he shouted over the blare of fire alarms.
Anna swiped the master pass from Vincent’s desk. The brass elevator doors slid open, and they threw themselves inside just as automatic rounds shredded the wood paneling around the frame.
The elevator plunged down into the darkness of the building's shaft.
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As the digital floor indicator counted down toward the basement, Anna checked the small screen on the titanium drive. A red LED flashed frantically: SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED: 180 SECONDS.
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