She Joked That Everyone Forgot Her Birthday / Chapter 34 / 60

Chapter 34 - The Fortress in the Sky

The service elevator moved in suffocating silence, creeping upward through the concrete spine of the skyscraper like an iron coffin on steel cables. Floor twenty. Floor thirty-five. Floor fifty.

With every floor we passed, the air grew thinner and colder. The atmospheric pressure inside the building was dropping; Vivienne had depressurized the upper executive levels to keep any municipal tactical squads from breaching via roof rappels.

*Ping.*

The elevator halted at floor sixty-three—one floor below the executive boardroom.

Nicholas kicked the override hatch open with the heel of his boot, his weapon drawn and leveled. We slipped into the carpeted executive hallway. The emergency red floor strips cast an eerie, blood-colored glow against the mahogany-paneled walls and modern art displays.

Two mercenaries in matte-black composite body armor stood guard at the base of the private spiral staircase leading up to floor sixty-four. They didn't even have time to raise their tactical rifles.

Nicholas moved with terrifying, lethal speed. Two muffled double-taps cracked from his suppressed pistol. The two guards dropped like sacks of wet flour onto the plush wool runner, their weapons clattering softly against the baseboards.

"Clear," Nicholas breathed, motioning me forward.

We ascended the winding mahogany stairs, the sound of our footsteps swallowed by the heavy runner. As we neared the top landing, the sound of classical piano music drifted down the stairwell.

Chopin. Nocturne in C Minor.

My stomach twisted violently. That was the piece she used to play on the upright Baldwin piano in our cottage before the clinic burned down. The exact melody she used to hum while tucking me into bed under the hand-stitched quilts.

I reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the penthouse boardroom.

The entire floor was an open-concept expanse of marble and glass, surrounded by a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree panorama of the rain-lashed Boston skyline and the black expanse of the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Lightning flared across the harbor, momentarily illuminating the dark shapes of the submarines breaching the outer shoals like jagged obsidian teeth.

Vivienne Vance sat on a cream leather sofa, sipping amber liquid from a cut-crystal glass. Victoria remained tied to the chair ten feet away, her eyes widening in terror as she saw us enter.

"Right on time," Vivienne said without turning her head, setting the crystal tumbler down onto the glass coffee table with a delicate *clink*. "Nicholas... you shoot with your father's precision. But your posture is slightly more defensive. You're protecting her."

Nicholas kept his weapon leveled directly between her shoulder blades. "Tell your mercenaries to drop their weapons, Vivienne, or this room becomes a slaughterhouse."

"Mercenaries?" Vivienne turned around slowly, crossing one elegant, silk-clad leg over the other. She looked barely forty-five years old, preserved by untold millions and absolute cruelty. She smiled—a smile that was radiant, terrifying, and utterly devoid of warmth. "My dear boy, the men in this room aren't mercenaries."

From the shadows behind the structural marble pillars, four men stepped forward, lowering their balaclavas.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

One of them was Commissioner Harrison of the Boston Police Department. Another was Judge Vance-Lowell, the chief magistrate of the maritime admiralty court. The third was the regional director of port security.

"The Harbor Alliance never belonged to the Falcone family, Nicholas," Vivienne said smoothly, standing up to her full height. "You were simply the caretakers. The Vance matriarchy built the trade routes three centuries ago. And now... my daughter has come home to take her place beside me."

She looked at me, extending one slender, manicured hand.