Chapter 5
The Red Room sat beneath an old Mercer winery nobody used for wine anymore.
My father designed it before I inherited the organization. Six million in liquid emergency cash sat there, but that was only the obvious layer.
The real value was relationships.
Names of men who owed Mercer favors.
Safe routes.
Old alliances.
Fallback crews.
And sealed family instructions meant only for succession crises.
Marcus Vale knew that.
Ellis knew enough.
Vanessa clearly knew more than she should.
We left the airport with Sabrina and Noah in a separate armored car surrounded by my men.
Sabrina protested.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
I stopped.
Wrong instinct.
For two years Ellis had been deciding where she went.
I was about to repeat the shape of it because my motive felt better.
I corrected myself.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“Then you stay beside me.”
She nodded.
That mattered.
At the winery, the outer gate was already open.
Vincent Calder stood outside.
Alive.
Angry.
“Marcus Vale locked me out of my own reserve.”
I looked at him.
“So you didn’t leak the card.”
His eyes narrowed.
“What card?”
Good.
Genuine confusion.
We went in together.
The underground vault had three access points.
Outer security.
Card recognition.
Blood confirmation.
Marcus had passed the first.
He could not pass the second without Sabrina’s card.
Unless—
Vincent swore.
“Duplicate reader.”
Someone had installed a second card console beside the original.
Recent.
Illegal even by our standards.
It had recorded card identifiers remotely.
Sabrina’s card did not need to be physically present if someone scanned it earlier.
“When?”
Vincent checked the maintenance log.
Then looked at Sabrina.
“Private academy fundraiser. Nine months ago.”
Sabrina went still.
Vanessa chaired that fundraiser.
There it was.
Noah had been carrying a card his father and Vanessa had already copied.
So why take the original today?
I knew before Vincent answered.
“The original disables duplicate access.”
He nodded.
If they got the real card, they could invalidate Sabrina’s control completely.
I looked at my sister.
“They weren’t only trying to open the reserve.”
I held up the black card.
“They were trying to make sure you could never open it again.”
Then we heard a door slam somewhere deeper inside the vault.
May you like
Marcus Vale was still there.
And he had not come alone.
