Despite the freezing lake water sloshing around his leather boots, he looked as if he had just arrived at the opera in St.
Petersburg.
“Vincent Moretti,” the old man said, his voice the exact aristocratic timbre that had spoken through the dead-line telephone in the penthouse.
“And Emma Ward.
The last true inheritor of the Grand Duchess’s logistics ledger.
A pity we must meet in such damp accommodations.”
“Identify yourself before I put a bullet between your eyes,” Vincent replied, his weapon pointed directly at the man’s forehead without a millimeter of tremor.
The old man smiled faintly, tapping his cane once on the cracked concrete.
“I am Count Nikolai Vorontsov.
Executor of the North American Trusteeship for the Romanov-Allied Sovereign Fund.
For eighty years, this city believed its wealth came from meatpacking, timber, and rail.
What a charming, rustic illusion.”
Emma stepped forward, keeping her carbine leveled.
“My grandmother spent fifty years living in a cold-water flat in Bridgeport, eating stale bread while your ‘Trusteeship’ hoarded hundreds of millions under our names!
Why did she live like a beggar if she held the keys to this machine?”
Vorontsov’s eyes softened with a look of patronizing pity.
“Because, my dear child, your grandmother understood the curse.
She knew that the moment the Core Vault fell below its critical holding mass—the moment the debt of the American Midwest was forgiven or erased—the mooring locks would automatically cycle.
This vessel, the K-179, was not hidden under the lake to threaten Chicago.
It was parked here as an insurance policy.
It carries the physical gold and sovereign bonds that back the secret currency of the global shadow market.”
“And Katherine Ward?”
Vincent challenged.
“What was she to you?”
Chapter 125 – Blood on the Sub-Level
Before the last word had fully left Vorontsov’s lips, the shadows behind him exploded into violence.
Two of the Count’s personal guards shifted their stances to aim directly at Emma, but Vincent fired first.
The report of Vincent’s rifle in the enclosed subterranean vault was deafening.
The first guard collapsed into the freezing water as a hollow-point round took him in the collarbone.
Immediately, the cavernous chamber erupted into a ferocious firefight.
Gunfire flashed orange against the wet concrete, pinging wildly off the iron hull of the submarine.
“Garza!
Suppressive fire on the hatch!”
Vincent shouted, dragging Emma behind a concrete support pillar as rounds chewed through the masonry, sending razor-sharp fragments of stone slicing through the air.
Emma didn’t wait for protection.
Dropping to one knee, she sighted down the barrel of her carbine and fired two controlled bursts into the catwalk above the submarine’s docking collar, dropping a sniper who had just emerged from an upper observation port.
Her hands were rock-steady, the instincts forged through months of surviving the Sterlings and Katherine Ward’s hitmen taking over completely.
“Vorontsov is retreating into the hull!” she yelled over the deafening roar of automatic weapons.
“We can’t let him seal that hatch from the inside!”
Vincent shouted back.
“If that sub detaches while docked in our foundation, the vacuum collapse will pull the entire tower into the river!”
Marco and two more Moretti operatives surged forward, throwing flashbang grenades toward the open hatch.
The brilliant white detonations blinded the remaining guards on the loading ramp, allowing Vincent and Emma to break cover.
Vincent sprinted through ankle-deep water, firing from the hip, neutralizing a guard who attempted to bring a heavy shotgun to bear.
Reaching the ramp, Vincent lunged forward, grabbing Vorontsov by the collar of his cashmere coat just as the old man reached the submarine’s threshold.
Vorontsov whipped his malachite cane around with astonishing speed, a concealed blade springing from its tip, slicing cleanly through the sleeve of Vincent’s coat and scoring a shallow line across his bicep.
Vincent didn’t even flinch.
He struck the older man with the butt of his rifle, sending him sprawling back onto the metal grating inside the submarine’s entry vestibule.
Emma leaped through the circular opening a second later, kicking the fallen cane deep into the dark depths of the vessel’s interior corridor.
Chapter 126 – The Belly of the Iron Beast
The interior of the K-179 smelled of diesel fuel, damp felt, and decades of stagnant, pressurized atmosphere.
It was a technological relic from the late 1960s, extensively retrofitted with modern fiber-optic cables that snaked alongside brass gauges and Cyrillic warning placards.
Vorontsov lay on the deck, blood trickling from his split lip, but his cold, aristocratic arrogance remained unbroken.
He looked up at Vincent, then at Emma, and laughed softly.
“You fools think you have won an engagement,” he murmured, coughing lightly.
“You have merely boarded a coffin that is already on a timer.”
Emma stepped closer, aiming her rifle directly at his chest.
