My future husband thought marrying me would protect his billion-dollar empire and bury his financial crimes forever, until the chapel doors opened and a woman he claimed was dead walked inside. / Chapter 57 / 60

Chapter 57 - The Price of Defiance

The first operative moved with brutal, practiced speed, lunging forward with a collapsible baton aimed at my right shoulder to disarm me.

I didn't try to shoot him in the chest; his body armor would have absorbed the 9mm rounds. Instead, I dropped low, throwing my weight onto my left heel, and fired twice into his exposed knee.

The gunshots in the enclosed granite rotunda were deafening, like cannons detonating inside an iron bell.

The man screamed, his leg collapsing beneath him as bone and sinew shattered. As he fell, I drove my shoulder into his hip, wrenching the submachine gun from his sling while firing a third round upward through the unarmored underside of his jaw. He went limp instantly, crashing across the polished terrazzo.

The second operative fired a burst of suppressed rounds.

The bullets chewed into the mahogany desk, splintering the antique wood into shards that sliced across my cheek. I scrambled behind the base of the massive fluted pillar, the heavy submachine gun clutched against my ribs, cold sweat stinging the open cuts on my face.

"Evelyn!" Constance’s voice cut through the gunfire, surprisingly steady, amplified by the desk's PA system. "You are wasting precious seconds! The Syndicate's thermite is already through the third bulkhead! You cannot fight them, and you cannot fight me!"

I flipped the fire selector of the captured weapon to fully automatic.

"I spent five months learning how your family operates, Constance!" I yelled back, leaning out just far enough to fire a controlled four-round burst at the base of the second guard's cover, pinning him behind a rack of humming processors. "You never leave a facility without an override. Julian had one in Norway. Jonathan had one in Montreal. Where is the purge protocol for this mountain?"

A dry, bitter laugh crackled through the speaker. "The purge protocol is my heart rate monitor, you fool! If I die, the ventilation flues close, and liquid nitrogen floods the computer cores! You will freeze to death in the dark before you ever see daylight!"

*THUD. THUD. BOOM.*

The lights in the rotunda flickered violently and died, replaced instantly by the blood-red strobes of emergency lighting.

The main blast doors at the end of the elevator shaft had failed.

Through the ventilation ducts, the sounds of tactical breaching echoed clearly: the harsh, metallic chatter of high-caliber carbines, the muffled thuds of flashbangs, and the shouted tactical commands of the Syndicate's assault team sweeping the lower corridors.

`SECURITY BREACH: SUB-LEVEL SIX ENTRYWAY`

`UNAUTHORIZED HOSTILES ON DECK`

The second guard panicked. He broke cover, turning his weapon toward the elevator corridor to repel the incoming strike team.

I stepped out from behind the fluted pillar, aligned my sights with the center of his back, and squeezed the trigger. Three rounds punched through his tactical vest between his shoulder blades. He stumbled forward, gasping, and collapsed face-down on the blood-slicked stone.