Chapter 6 - The Perimeter Trap
Down in the subterranean security control room, the monitors flickered with static.
Salvo stared at the main console, his hand hovering over the master alarm switch. The red warning light on sector four—the northern access road—was blinking furiously.
"Anton," Salvo barked into his comms-link. "Report. Sector four is showing motion on the exterior grid. Did the search team find anything?"
There was no response on the channel. Only a faint, rhythmic hiss of dead air.
"Anton, answer me," Salvo repeated, standing up from his chair.
The steel heavy door of the control room swung open with a slow, grinding screech.
Salvo reached for his holster, but he was too slow. A heavy, silenced pistol barrel pressed firmly against the center of his forehead before his hand even cleared leather.
"Don't do it, Salvo," a smooth, cultured voice said from the shadows of the doorway.
Julian Vance stepped into the white fluorescent light of the control room. He wore a cashmere overcoat, his silver hair neatly combed, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the glare of the monitors. He looked like an executive stepping off a commuter train from Wall Street, except for the black leather tactical gloves on his hands.
"Julian?" Salvo choked out, his eyes wide with disbelief. "What the hell are you doing? The boss is upstairs—"
"The boss is currently locked in the master suite wondering why his smart-home system is overriding his manual overrides," Julian corrected smoothly. He gestured with his free hand to another man standing behind him—a heavy-set operative in black tactical gear bearing the insignia of a private security firm based in Zurich. "Tie him up, Miller. We don't have much time before the girl starts asking questions."
Salvo struggled, but Miller was already moving, slamming him against the control console and binding his wrists with heavy zip-ties before shoving a thick roll of duct tape across his mouth.
Julian stepped up to the main console, tapping a sequence of keys with practiced ease. On the large overhead monitor, the digital floor plan of the Castellano estate shifted, turning the master suite’s status from Secure to Quarantine.
"It’s almost poetic," Julian murmured, watching the status lights turn amber. "Damon spent ten years trying to legitimize a criminal enterprise, believing that if he wore enough Tom Ford and filed enough quarterly reports, the blood on his grandfather's hands would wash away. He never realized that the empire wasn't built on spreadsheets. It was built on leverage."
May you like
He pressed a key, routing an encrypted satellite transmission to an off-site receiver in downtown Manhattan.
"And the girl," Julian continued, half to himself, "is the only piece of leverage left that can blow the whole thing wide open."
