Chapter 10 - The Ring of Fire
The silence in the bunker was absolute, save for the low, rhythmic hum of the server racks behind the filing cabinets.
“My mother’s ring,” I repeated, the reality of the statement washing over me in cold waves. “Elaine has been wearing it to court, to dinners, to the country club... wearing a biometric encryption key worth billions of dollars like a piece of costume jewelry.”
“Precisely,” Catherine said, slipping the flash drive into her pocket and reaching for a heavy, matte-black tactical flashlight hanging on the wall. “And right now, Marcus Thorne and his federal goons are tearing the main house apart looking for it. If they find Elaine and strip that ring off her before we reach her first, the entire corporate syndicate goes into lockdown, and every asset we fought for vanishes into untraceable offshore accounts forever.”
I stood frozen for a second, the shock of my father’s manipulation giving way to a cold, razor-sharp fury that burned brighter and hotter than anything I had ever felt before. Richard Whitman had tried to treat me like a pawn in his grand, sociopathic chess match. He had built my life, my career, and my anger in a laboratory of his own design.
Well, the pawn had just figured out how to flip the board.
“They won't find her first,” I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, steady calm as I walked over to the workbench and picked up a heavy iron wrench resting beside a tool caddy.
Catherine raised an eyebrow, a flicker of genuine respect crossing her features. “And what do you propose we do, Victoria? Storm the main floor unarmed against a federal detail?”
“We don't need weapons,” I replied, turning toward the heavy steel door at the far end of the bunker. “My father built this panic room with a secondary service tunnel leading directly out to the estate’s secondary perimeter gate—right where your town car is parked.”
I looked back at Catherine, letting a cold, humorless smile touch my lips—the exact same smile Richard Whitman used to give his board members right before he dismantled them.
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“Let’s go crash the party.”
I raised the wrench, slammed it against the manual release latch of the steel door, and stepped out into the dark, underground corridor, ready to take back everything that was stolen from my mother, starting with the ring around Elaine’s neck.
