On the concrete floor leading toward the central blast pit, the thick layer of grey coal dust was disturbed.
Not by old drafts, but by fresh, boot-tread patterns—heavy military lug soles.
“We’re not the first ones here,” Mateo hissed, instantly raising his weapon toward the catwalks.
“Take cover!”
Vincent roared.
The darkness above erupted in gunfire.
Muzzle flashes strobed like violent lightning across the rusted iron rafters.
High-velocity 5.56mm rounds chewed through the concrete floor around them, sending up blinding clouds of pulverized stone.
One of Moretti’s vanguard operators caught a burst to the shoulder, spinning to the deck with a muffled cry.
Mateo immediately laid down suppressive fire, his submachine gun barking rhythmically into the shadows above.
Vincent tackled Emma behind the curved steel rim of a twenty-ton slag ladle, pulling his Kimber .45 from his holster.
“They were waiting,” Emma gasped, pressing her back against the freezing steel as ricochets screamed off the metal plate inches from her head.
“They knew your father’s coordinates!”
“No,” Vincent spat, leaning around the edge and firing three rapid, perfectly placed shots into a sniper nest sixty feet above.
A dark figure tumbled from the catwalk, crashing through a skylight and plummeting to the concrete floor with a sickening crunch.
“They didn’t know the coordinates.
They set an ambush at the entrance because they knew I was the only one who could open the vault.”
From the shadows near the far end of the furnace, a voice amplified by a megaphone echoed through the cavernous foundry, smooth, cold, and dripping with venom.
Chapter 66 – Vault of the Dead
The voice belonged to a man Emma recognized immediately from the dossiers Vincent had reviewed days earlier: Lucian Vance, the younger, deadlier brother of the late Senator Marcus Vance, and the field commander for the Sovereign Ledger’s private paramilitary wing.
“Lucian,” Vincent called out without stepping out from behind cover.
His voice was utterly calm, devoid of fear.
“Your brother died with a hole in his head ten minutes ago.
You’re running out of family members to bury.”
A cold, humorless laugh bounced off the iron rafters.
“Marcus was a politician.
Soft, greedy, and easily replaced.
I don’t care about Marcus.
I care about the ledger.
Step out with the access sequence, Vincent, and maybe I’ll let the little waitress take the morning train back to Chicago before we level this county.”
Emma looked at Vincent.
Her hand slipped into her pocket, gripping a small tactical knife Mateo had given her earlier.
She met Vincent’s eyes.
“Don’t let them have it,” she whispered fiercely.
“Whatever is in that vault, your father died to keep it out of their hands.
If they get it, nobody survives anyway.”
A faint, lethal smirk curved Vincent’s lips.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
Vincent signaled Mateo with two fingers, pointing toward the emergency gas main lever on the north wall.
Mateo nodded grimly, crawling through the shadows behind the slag piles.
Vincent stepped out from behind the heavy steel ladle, his hands held at shoulder height, empty of weapons.
Instantly, four red laser beams snapped onto his chest from different perimeters of the catwalk.
Out from the gloom of the blast furnace stepped Lucian Vance, clad in charcoal tactical body armor, flanked by four heavily armed mercenaries carrying automatic rifles.
Lucian held an ivory-handled combat knife in his right hand, twirling it with casual cruelty.
“Where is it, Moretti?”
Lucian sneered, coming to a halt twenty yards away.
“The vault entrance is beneath the cooling pit, but the seismic lock requires a biometric frequency.
Don’t play dumb.
Your father used his own DNA or yours.”
Vincent tilted his head.
“My father was smarter than you, Lucian.
He didn’t use DNA.
DNA can be extracted from a corpse.”
Lucian’s eyes narrowed.
“What did he use?”
“A trigger,” Vincent said.
Chapter 67 – The Ambush in the Slag
A deafening siren shrieked through Foundry Nine as fifty-year-old pressurized methane lines ruptured with explosive force.
A wall of pressurized, stagnant industrial gas hissed violently into the air around Lucian’s men.
At the same instant, Vincent drew his concealed Kimber from his small-of-back holster and fired a single round directly into the cast-iron electrical breaker box on the wall.
The spark ignited the vapor.
BOOM!
A rolling wave of orange fire tore through the lower level, throwing Lucian and his front-line mercenaries across the concrete floor.
The shockwave rattled the massive iron rafters, dislodging tons of rusted metal and sending heavy beams crashing down through the catwalks.
“Emma, run!”
Vincent shouted, seizing her hand as the blast cleared.
They plunged through the billowing smoke toward the base of the cooling pit.
Behind them, gunfire erupted in absolute chaos.
Mateo’s team engaged the disoriented survivors, their weapons chattering in relentless three-round bursts.
