Chapter 2 - The Red Beam
The crimson light sliced through the wooden louvers, casting bloody red stripes across Lily’s off-white nightshirt. She pulled her knees against her chest, flattening herself into the furthest recessed corner behind Marcus's winter trench coats. Every instinct urged her to scream, but her father’s voice echoed in her ear canal, steady and grounding.
"Do not flinch, Lily. If they open the door, run under his legs toward the terrace. I am hitting the main boulevard now." In the background, the violent howl of a twin-turbo engine tearing through wet asphalt bled into the audio feed.
The heavy footsteps drew nearer. The floorboards groaned beneath the man's weight. Lily watched through the narrow wooden gap as a pair of muddy tactical combat boots halted inches from the base of the closet. The man reached out. His gloved hand gripped the closet handle, beginning to pull.
"Leave the closet, Roman!" Clara snapped from across the room. Her flashlight beam was trained on Marcus’s walk-in vault, hidden behind an oil painting on the far wall. "The biometric safe is cycling into lockout mode. Get over here and crack the secondary bypass before it alarms the central grid!"
The brute paused, his fingers slipping from the wooden knob. He grunted, spitting on the hardwood floor before turning back toward the safe. "If the kid saw our faces, she's a liability anyway. Just grab the bonds and let's go."
"The girl is worth three times the paper," Clara hissed, her fingers rapidly entering keystrokes on an external hacking unit linked to the safe's digital keypad. "The consortium wants Marcus Vance broken, not just robbed. The girl goes to the vessel."
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Inside the dark alcove, Lily felt the cold plastic of the phone slip slightly against her sweaty palms. On the screen, the live listening feed showed a fluctuating waveform of their voices. Suddenly, the screen flared brightly with an incoming text alert: SYSTEM OVERRIDE: SILENT ALARM TRIPPED BY OWNER.
The sudden burst of light reflected against the closet slats. Clara stopped typing instantly, turning her head toward the wardrobe.
