Chapter 5 - The Fortress Breached
The revelation detonated through the room like an artillery shell.
Marcus Vance was not our biological father—or so the state welfare system had claimed when they threw Clara and me into his private foster home thirty years ago.
He had presented himself to the world as a generous philanthropist taking in abandoned street kids, while using us as labor and emotional punching bags in his secluded Long Island estate.
If Leo’s words were true, Vance’s sadistic obsession with our family went far deeper than the cruel whim of a foster parent.
My phone chimed with an encrypted security priority-one alert from the Upper East Side clinic.
I tapped the speakerphone instantly.
“Report,” I commanded.
“Ethan, we have multiple bogeys approaching the medical facility!” Marcus’s voice roared over the sound of automatic gunfire.
“Black tactical vans just breached the underground parking gate!
They’re using military-grade flashbangs and EMP jammers!
They’re heading straight for the third-floor ICU!”
The call dissolved into static as the EMP wave cut the clinic's local communication relays.
They weren't waiting for nightfall.
They knew Clara was alive, they knew she was hospitalized, and they were moving to cut her throat before she could speak.
“Chen, take the boy into the panic room behind the library,” I ordered, rising to my feet with terrifying calm.
“Lock the vault doors.
Even an anti-tank missile won't penetrate that titanium alloy.
You don't open that door for anyone except me or Marcus.”
“Ethan, wait!” Chen protested, grabbing Leo’s hand.
“You can't go down there alone without backup!”
“My sister is in that building,” I said, pulling a custom steel-plated automatic from the hidden compartment under my desk.
“And I’ve spent twelve years regretting the day I let her burn.”
I took the private service elevator down to the subterranean garage, where my black armored sedan sat idling with two syndicate gunmen waiting in the front.
“Eighty-Fourth Street, now,” I told the driver as I climbed into the back.
“Run every red light.
If anyone gets in the way, push them through the intersection.”
The heavy sedan launched out of the ramp, roaring into the gray morning drizzle of Manhattan.
We covered forty blocks in seven minutes, clipping mirrors and parting yellow cabs like the Red Sea.
As we turned the corner onto Eighty-Fourth, thick black smoke was already billowing from the clinic’s basement entrance.
Two city patrol cars sat smashed against the curb, their sirens wailing uselessly into the empty street.
Three men in unmarked gray combat gear were dragging a heavy canvas stretcher down the clinic’s front marble steps.
On the stretcher was Clara, still hooked to portable monitors, struggling violently against heavy leather restraints.
Standing beside the extraction van was a man in a charcoal overcoat, holding a silver-tipped walking cane.
Even through the pouring rain and the curtain of gray exhaust, I recognized that cold, aristocratic sneer.
It was Julian Vance, Marcus Vance’s eldest biological son—the golden boy who had watched us get beaten in that basement while sipping vintage wine in his silk suits.
“Ram the van!” I shouted to my driver.
Our two-ton armored sedan slammed into the side of the extraction van with a deafening crash of crumpling steel and shattering glass.
The impact spun their vehicle ninety degrees, throwing the two mercenaries onto the wet asphalt.
I kicked my door open before our car even stopped moving, my weapon barking twice in rapid succession.
Both mercenaries dropped to the ground, neutralizing the immediate perimeter around the stretcher.
Julian Vance didn't flinch; he raised his cane, revealing a concealed firearm built into the silver handle.
“Still playing the protective big brother, Ethan?” Julian mocked, his voice smooth and dripping with poisonous arrogance.
“You were always so predictably sentimental.
That’s why Father always considered you our greatest failed investment.”
Clara choked through her mask, her eyes rolling in terror as she tried to warn me.
“Where is the old monster, Julian?” I growled, stepping toward him with my gun pointed dead center at his forehead.
Julian merely smiled, a sickening, victorious grin that chilled me to the marrow.
“You think this raid was about taking your pathetic sister back?” Julian chuckled softly, adjusting his wet lapel.
“This was just the distraction, little brother.
While you raced up here to play the hero, Father’s real extraction team just bypassed your penthouse security grid on Fifth Avenue using your own executive codes.”
My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss.
May you like
“Leo,” I gasped, the world spinning violently around me.
“He’s already on his way to the airstrip, Ethan,” Julian whispered, his thumb clicking the cane’s firing pin.
