Chapter 6
The smile on Adrian’s face was the worst thing I had ever seen.
Warm.
Friendly.
Like he was inviting us to a barbecue.
Not holding a loaded gun to a woman’s head.
“Hello, Rook,” he said. “Long time no see. I heard you were dead. Shame. I was just starting to miss you.”
Rook stepped in front of Leo.
“Let her go, Adrian. This is between you and me.”
“Between us?” Adrian laughed. A sharp, barking sound. “This was never between us, Rook. This was always about Richard. Always. He had everything. The money. The power. The respect. And what did I get? Crumbs. I built this company with him. I worked eighty hours a week for twenty years. And he still treated me like an employee. Like I was disposable. Well… who’s disposable now?”
He pressed the gun harder into Elena’s temple.
She didn’t flinch.
She just stared at him.
Hate in her eyes.
“Step away from the vault, Rook,” Adrian said. “And tell the boy to put his thumb back on that scanner. You’re going to open it for me. And then you’re all going to die. Well… not all of you. The boy lives. For a while. I need him to sign a few things. Transfer a few accounts. Then… well. Accidents happen every day.”
Behind Adrian, I could see his men filling the hallway.
At least twenty of them.
All armed.
We were outnumbered four to one.
Trapped.
Rook’s eyes flicked to Mia.
Then to me.
Then back to Adrian.
He smiled.
A cold, wolfish smile.
“You really think you’ve won, don’t you?”
Adrian’s smile faltered.
Just for a second.
“What are you talking about?”
“You forgot one thing, Adrian. You always did. You were always so busy looking at what Richard had… you never bothered to look at who he had protecting him.”
Rook raised his hand.
Fingers snapped.
Loud and clear.
All the lights in the office went out.
Total darkness.
Gunshots erupted.
But not at us.
From the hallway.
From behind Adrian’s men.
Screams.
Shouting.
More gunfire.
“Alpha team!” Jax’s voice boomed over the chaos. “Clear the hall! Now!”
Adrian panicked.
He fired blindly into the dark.
The bullet went wide.
Rook lunged.
He hit Adrian like a freight train.
The gun went flying.
They crashed into Richard’s desk.
Papers went everywhere.
I grabbed Leo.
Pulled him behind the massive desk.
“Stay down!” I yelled.
The lights flickered back on.
The battle was already over.
Jax and Marcus and the rest of Alpha team were standing in the office doorway.
Adrian’s men were all on the floor.
Dead or unconscious.
Rook was on top of Adrian.
Punching him.
Over and over.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Adrian’s face was turning into pulp.
“Rook!” Elena yelled. “Stop! We need him alive!”
Rook raised his fist for one more punch.
Then he stopped.
Breathing hard.
He stood up.
Dragged Adrian to his feet.
The man was barely conscious.
Blood pouring from his nose and mouth.
“Open the vault,” Rook said. “Now.”
Adrian laughed through broken teeth.
“Can’t. Needs Richard’s thumb. And Richard is… otherwise occupied.”
Rook pulled a knife from his belt.
Held it to Adrian’s throat.
“Where is he?”
“Go to hell.”
Rook pressed the blade in.
A trickle of blood ran down Adrian’s neck.
“Wrong answer.”
“Wait!” Adrian gasped. “Wait! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything! Just don’t kill me!”
“Start talking.”
“He’s at the old Voss estate in the Hamptons! The basement! We’ve been keeping him there! We needed him alive for the accounts! For the biometrics! Please! That’s all I know! I swear!”
Rook looked at Zero over the radio.
“Check it.”
Thirty seconds passed.
“He’s telling the truth,” Zero said. “I just pulled the security feeds from the estate. There are men everywhere. And… I see movement in the basement. Someone is down there. I can’t tell who, but the heat signature matches an adult male.”
Rook dragged Adrian toward the door.
“Tie him up. Put him in the van. We’ll deal with him later.”
Two of his men grabbed Adrian.
Dragged him away.
Rook turned back to the vault.
“Now what?” Mia said. “We still need Richard’s thumbprint.”
Leo stepped out from behind the desk.
He walked to the biometric scanner.
“Dad taught me a trick,” he said.
He pulled a small metal case from his backpack.
One I hadn’t seen before.
He opened it.
Inside, a silicone thumbprint mold.
Perfectly detailed.
“Dad made this a month ago,” Leo said. “Said if he ever wasn’t around when I needed to get into the vault, this would work. He tested it a dozen times. Said it was better than the real thing.”
He pressed the mold to the scanner.
Green light.
“Secondary authentication verified,” the robotic voice said. “Vault unlocking.”
Heavy motors groaned.
The steel door swung open.
Inside, shelves lined with boxes.
Hard drives.
Envelopes.
And in the center, on a pedestal, a single black laptop.
“That’s it,” Leo said. “That’s the backup. Everything.”
Rook grabbed the laptop.
Grabbed a handful of hard drives.
“Bag everything,” he said. “We’re out of here. Now.”
Ten minutes later, we were back in the vans.
Driving away from the building.
Sirens started wailing in the distance.
The police were finally coming.
Too late.
As always.
We didn’t go back to the warehouse.
Too risky now.
Rook had another safe house.
A penthouse in Tribeca.
Owned by a shell company.
Nobody knew about it.
Not even Richard.
We secured the place.
Posted guards.
Then we gathered around the big table in the living room.
Rook opened the laptop.
It booted up.
Asked for a password.
Leo typed something in.
The desktop appeared.
Thousands of files.
Audio recordings.
Videos.
Emails.
Bank records.
Wire transfers.
Everything.
“Zero,” Rook said. “Get to work. I want every single file copied. Decrypted. Cataloged. I want to know exactly what they did. Exactly when. And exactly who was involved. Every single name. Every single dollar.”
Zero sat down.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“This is going to take hours,” she said. “Maybe days. There’s terabytes of data here.”
“We have time,” Rook said. “For now.”
He turned to Leo.
The boy was sitting on the couch.
Staring at his hands.
“Are you okay, kid?”
Leo looked up.
“They have my dad. At the estate. In the basement.”
“I know.”
“When do we go get him?”
Rook looked at the others.
“Now.”
“Rook,” Elena said. “We should wait. Plan this properly. The estate is huge. They’ll have dozens of men. Security systems. Dogs. We can’t just charge in there blind.”
“Elena’s right,” Jax said. “We need to scout it first. Find out how many men. Where they’re positioned. Where exactly in the basement they’re keeping Richard. If we go in hot, we could get him killed.”
Rook looked at Leo.
The boy’s eyes were begging.
“Please, Rook. Every minute they have him… he’s hurt. I know it. I can feel it.”
Rook’s jaw tightened.
He knew he couldn’t say no.
Not to that face.
“Okay,” he said. “We go at dawn. Jax—you take three men. Scout the perimeter from the tree line. Use thermal. Count every guard. Find every camera. Find the best way in and the best way out. Mia—you’re with me. We hit hard. We hit fast. We get Richard. We get out. Zero—you stay here. You hack their security system. You give us eyes inside. You blind their cameras the second we cross the property line. Marcus—you hold the road. Nobody comes in. Nobody comes out. Any questions?”
Nobody said anything.
“Good. Rest while you can. In four hours… we bring Richard home.”
Nobody slept.
How could you?
We sat around.
Cleaned guns.
Checked gear.
Waited.
At 4:45 a.m., we left.
Three black SUVs.
Tinted windows.
No plates.
The drive to the Hamptons took two hours.
We parked a mile from the estate.
Jax and his team moved out on foot.
Into the woods.
We waited.
An hour later, Jax’s voice came over the radio.
“Okay. I count twenty-eight guards. Twelve on the perimeter. Eight patrolling the grounds. Eight inside the house. Cameras everywhere. Motion sensors. Dogs—three German shepherds patrolling the north side. Richard is in the old wine cellar under the east wing. Steel door. Biometric lock. Two guards outside at all times. They’re rotating every two hours. Next rotation is at 7:15.”
“Best entry point?” Rook asked.
“The old boathouse on the south side. Unused. No cameras. No guards. There’s a service tunnel that runs from the boathouse to the basement kitchen. It’s on the original blueprints. Zero—can you confirm?”
Thirty seconds.
“Confirmed,” Zero said. “Tunnel is still there. Sealed at both ends. But it’s structurally sound. You can cut through in under a minute.”
“Perfect,” Rook said. “Everybody move out. We enter through the boathouse. We take the tunnel. We come up in the kitchen. We take down anyone in our way. We get to the wine cellar. We get Richard. We go back the way we came. Silent as ghosts. No shooting unless absolutely necessary. Gunshots will bring every guard in the place down on us. Understood?”
“Understood,” everyone said.
We moved.
Through the woods.
Quiet as shadows.
The sun was starting to come up.
Pink and orange light over the water.
The estate was massive.
Twenty thousand square feet at least.
Tennis courts.
Pool.
Guest house.
Boathouse.
We reached the boathouse.
Rook pulled out a small cutting torch.
The metal door glowed red.
A circle cut out.
We slipped through.
Inside the boathouse, dust and cobwebs.
An old wooden rotting in the corner.
The tunnel entrance was behind a stack of old crates.
Another steel door.
Another cut.
We were in.
The tunnel was low.
We had to duck.
Dark.
Wet.
Smelled like mold and lake water.
Two hundred yards.
We reached the end.
Another steel door.
This one led up to the kitchen.
Rook pressed his ear to it.
Listened.
Held up one finger.
One person inside.
He signaled Mia.
She readied her baton.
Rook turned the wheel lock.
Slowly.
Quietly.
It clicked.
He swung the door open.
A cook stood by the stove.
Old woman.
Making coffee.
She turned.
Eyes wide.
Mia was on her before she could scream.
Chloroform.
She slumped to the floor.
Mia caught her.
Lowered her gently.
“Sorry, ma’am,” she whispered.
We moved through the kitchen.
Into the main house.
Silent.
The house was quiet.
Everyone was still asleep.
We moved down the hallway toward the east wing.
Past bedrooms.
Offices.
A library.
Then—stairs leading down.
To the basement.
To the wine cellar.
Two guards stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Big.
Armed.
Rook signaled Jax and Marcus.
Three of them moved down the stairs.
Fast.
Silent.
The guards never had a chance.
Taken down simultaneously.
Chloroform.
They were out before they hit the floor.
Now the wine cellar door.
Steel.
Thick.
Biometric scanner.
“Zero,” Rook whispered into his radio. “Can you get this door open?”
“Working on it… almost… there.”
Click.
The door unlocked.
Rook pulled it open.
Inside, rows of wine racks.
Dusty bottles.
And at the very back, in a makeshift cell made of iron bars, sat Richard Voss.
He was alive.
Barely.
He was shirtless.
Bruises covered his chest and back.
His left arm was in a makeshift sling.
His face was swollen.
One eye was swollen shut.
He looked up as we entered.
His eyes found Rook.
Then they found Leo.
He tried to stand.
Couldn’t.
He fell back against the wall.
“Leo?” he whispered. His voice was broken. Hoarse. “Is that really you?”
Leo ran to the bars.
“Dad! Dad, I’m here! We came to get you!”
Rook shot the lock off the cell door with a suppressed pistol.
It clattered to the floor.
He pulled the door open.
Richard crawled out.
He held his arms out.
Leo ran into them.
Father and son.
Holding each other like they would never let go.
Richard was crying.
Sobbing into his son’s hair.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said. “I thought they’d gotten to you too. I’m so sorry, Leo. I’m so sorry I let this happen.”
Leo pulled back.
He looked at his father’s bruised face.
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m here. Rook is here. We’re all here. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Rook knelt beside his brother.
“Can you walk?”
Richard nodded.
With help.
Rook and Jax pulled him to his feet.
Put his arms over their shoulders.
“Let’s move,” Rook said. “We’re not out of this yet.”
We turned to leave.
And stopped.
Standing in the doorway of the wine cellar, blocking our exit, were ten men.
All with guns.
And behind them, clapping slowly, was a woman.
Beautiful.
Late thirties.
Blonde hair.
Expensive dress.
She was smiling.
“Beautiful,” she said. “Absolutely beautiful. The prodigal father returns. The loyal uncle. The brave little boy. It’s like a movie. Too bad it’s a tragedy.”
Richard froze.
His face went white.
“Victoria?”
The woman’s smile got wider.
“Hello, Richard. Did you really think you could keep me out of your will forever? Did you really think I’d let your bastard son inherit everything I worked for?”
She looked at Leo.
May you like
Pure poison in her eyes.
“Hello, Leo. I’m your stepmother. And I’m afraid… this is where your story ends.”
