Chapter 12 - The Ghost in the Obsidian Tower
The armored convoy did not return to the port.
Within ten minutes, the black sedans were tearing up the multi-lane highway toward the Obsidian Tower, cutting through the morning commuter traffic with sirens blaring.
Inside the back seat, Vincent was tapping furiously against a ruggedized military tablet, calling up the encrypted security logs of his penthouse suite.
“The firewall didn't just fall, Vivienne,” Vincent said, his jaw tight as lines of cascading green code scrolled across the screen.
“It was decrypted using an internal master override code.”
Vivienne leaned over his shoulder, watching the data feeds.
“Who has the master override?”
“Only three people,” Vincent replied coldly.
“Me. My uncle Julian...”
He paused.
“And Viktor Vance.”
The name hung in the air like a rotting corpse.
Vivienne’s breath caught in her throat.
“Viktor Vance? My uncle? He died in the fire seventeen years ago.”
“That’s what Julian told us,” Vincent said, his fingers flying across the touchscreen.
“Just like he told us you died in the municipal ward.”
The SUV screeched to a halt in the subterranean private garage of the Obsidian Tower.
The doors flew open before the vehicle had even finished rocking on its suspension.
Vincent and Marcus moved with lethal synchronization, drawing their sidearms as they stepped out into the concrete gloom.
Vivienne followed them closely, her hand resting on the small, snub-nosed pistol Marcus had pressed into her palm back at the hospital.
They entered the private elevator.
Vincent pressed his thumb against the biometric scanner and keyed in the twelve-digit hexadecimal sequence.
The brass doors hissed open.
They stepped out into the two-story glass penthouse overlooking the harbor.
The pristine, minimalist elegance of the room had been brutally violated.
Expensive black leather chairs were overturned.
Floor-to-ceiling glass panels were marked with dried mud.
And sitting in the center of the dark hardwood floor, surrounded by shattered porcelain and torn maritime records, was a man.
He was in his late fifties, wearing a rumpled gray linen suit that looked like it had been slept in for a week.
His hair was long, silver-streaked, and wild around a face lined with deep, ancient burn scars that twisted the left side of his mouth into a perpetual snarl.
He held a half-empty bottle of 30-year-old scotch in one hand and a rusted iron fireplace poker in the other.
He looked up as the elevator chimes echoed through the room.
His bloodshot eyes swept over Vincent, Marcus, and finally landed directly on Vivienne.
The bottle slipped from his fingers, shattering against the floorboards with a loud crack of amber glass.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Viktor Vance rasped, his voice sounding like dry gravel dragging across tin.
“The little mouse didn't burn after all.”
Vivienne stood frozen in the center of the room, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
“Uncle Viktor?” she whispered, the name feeling foreign and heavy on her tongue.
“Is that really you?”
Viktor pushed himself up from the floor with the iron poker, staggering slightly as he balanced his weight on his bad leg.
The left side of his body was covered in the exact same kind of puckered, red scar tissue that Vincent carried on his back.
“Sit down, Vivienne,” Viktor snarled, waving the iron poker toward an overturned sofa.
“Before the boy with the silver spoon blows my head off with his little tactical toy.”
Vincent did not lower his weapon.
His pistol remained locked directly on Viktor’s chest.
“You’ve been hiding in the shadow networks for seventeen years, Viktor,” Vincent said, his voice dripping with lethal suspicion.
“While your brother died of smoke-damaged lungs and your niece grew up in flophouses.”
Viktor let out a harsh, barking laugh that turned into a wet cough.
“Hiding?” Viktor spat, wiping his mouth with the back of his scarred hand.
“I wasn't hiding, boy.”
“I was hunting.”
Viktor pointed the rusted poker directly at Vincent’s chest.
“Your father didn't kill himself out of guilt, Vincent.”
“Julian didn't just burn our house down for a land patent.”
Viktor took a slow, staggering step forward.
“They weren't the only ones in the basement that night.”
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“There was a fourth man.”
“And he’s the one who gave Julian the matches.”
