Chapter 4 - The Penthouse Trap
The elevator didn't stop until it hit the sixty-first floor—the top of the Continental Hotel, far above the glittering lights of the Manhattan skyline. The digital display blinked a cold, glowing P before the doors slid open with a soft, mocking hiss.
I stood alone in the car, my breath coming in shallow, controlled gasps, my fingers still clutching the encrypted flash drive like a talisman. The penthouse was dark, lit only by the ambient neon glow of the city filtering through floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Persian rugs muffled my footsteps as I stepped out into a sprawling, minimalist office dominated by a massive mahogany desk and a wall lined with surveillance monitors showing every floor of the hotel below.
Except the monitors on the ballroom floor were currently flickering with static.
"Impressed?"
The voice came from the shadows near the corner wet bar. A tall, impeccably dressed man stepped into the dim light, swirling amber liquid in a crystal glass. It wasn't Larkin. It wasn't Thomas.
It was Arthur Vance—Viktor’s younger, far more dangerous brother, who supposedly ran the syndicate’s international shipping channels from Zurich.
"You hacked my server from the forty-second floor three weeks ago, Penelope," Arthur said smoothly, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of amusement and lethal coldness. "You thought you were being clever, routing your queries through proxy servers in Reykjavík. But you forgot one simple rule of accounting: every ghost leaves a balancing error."
I didn't step back. I squared my shoulders, letting the gunmetal chains catch the neon light. "If you wanted me dead, Arthur, you wouldn't have brought me up here. Your brother down in the ballroom is panicking about a federal data dump. You want the ledger."
Arthur chuckled, taking a slow sip of his drink. He walked toward the desk, setting his glass down with a sharp clink. "My brother is a dinosaur. He thinks in terms of blood and bullets. Me? I think in terms of leverage. Larkin brought you to that gala tonight to humiliate you, to break your spirit so you'd keep cooking his books in quiet misery. He had no idea you were already planning to bury him."
"Larkin murdered my mother," I said, my voice dropping to a low, venomous hum that echoed in the silent penthouse. "He’s going to prison, or he’s going into the ground. Either way, I’m finishing the audit."
Arthur’s smile widened, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That’s the spirit, my dear. But here is the complication: Larkin isn't the only one with secrets in that ledger. Your little data drop doesn't just hit the Steves family. It implicates half the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York—including the man currently investigating us."
Before I could process the implication, the private stairwell door at the back of the penthouse clicked open.
Footsteps echoed softly on the hardwood floor—fast, heavy, and purposeful.
I whipped around, expecting Gregor or Thomas.
Instead, Larkin stepped out of the stairwell, his suit jacket discarded, his tie loosened, and his Walther held loosely but steadily in his right hand. His eyes bypassed Arthur Vance entirely and locked straight onto me.
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"Put the flash drive down, Penelope," Larkin said, his voice dangerously soft. "Arthur isn't going to let you leave this room alive. And neither am I—unless you tell me where you hid the secondary decryption key."
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