Chapter 10 - The Toast That Never Happened
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I pulled the door of the conference room open and stepped into the marble corridor just as Cole’s voice came urgently over the tactical channel.
"Boss, stay inside the west wing! Two of the building’s lobby concierges who came up with the first NYPD detail were sleepers on Valkyrie Maritime’s payroll—they just hit the holding room with flashbangs and broke Julian Vance and Kael out toward the north atrium!"
Down at the far end of the penthouse gallery, thick white smoke billowed from the security office doorway.
Through the haze stepped Viktor Kael, now armed with a stolen police Glock, alongside two men in dark concierge uniforms carrying compact tactical carbines. Behind them hurried Julian Vance, clutching a bleeding graze on his left ear as he bolted toward the private spiral glass staircase that led up to the penthouse’s eighty-first-floor rooftop helipad.
"Wait for me, Julian!"
Behind me, Diana shoved past the stunned guard at the conference room door and sprinted wildly down the marble hallway in her silver gown toward Julian—either too panicked to remember that Julian had tried to frame her, or desperately thinking that getting onto that helicopter was the only way to avoid spending the next forty years in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
"Diana, get back!" I shouted, ducking behind a structural limestone pillar as one of the fake concierges fired a three-round burst down the gallery, shattering a six-foot crystal chandelier above the foyer.
Diana reached the base of the spiral staircase just as Julian and Kael started up the steps.
"Julian, take me with you!" Diana cried out, grabbing Julian’s coat sleeve with both hands. "Marcus found the audio recording on the drive! He knows about Valkyrie Maritime! If you leave me here, I’ll tell the feds everything!"
Julian stopped on the third step and looked down at Diana with pure, unadulterated contempt—until he saw Cole Mercer and three of my armed security guards rounding the corner from the dining room with weapons raised, cutting off their retreat to the elevators.
Instead of pushing Diana away, a cold, calculating gleam flashed in Julian’s eyes.
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He reached down, grabbed Diana roughly by the hair at the nape of her neck, and yanked her backward up the stairs in front of his chest as a human shield while Kael pressed the muzzle of his stolen Glock directly beneath Diana’s jaw.
"Hold your fire, Mercer!" Julian roared down from the spiral landing as Diana shrieked in terror, her silver heels scrabbling wildly on the glass treads. "One step closer to these stairs and Kael puts a hollow-point through the bride’s throat! Our helicopter is two minutes out from the East River—open the rooftop blast door from the security console right now, Marcus, or you can mop her brains off your marble floor!"
