Chapter 3 - The Ghost Account
The video feed lasted only three seconds before the broken phone screen finally went permanently black.
Those three seconds were enough to permanently shift the ground beneath my feet and change everything.
Elias Thorne, the man who had raised me in this brutal underworld, was holding my unborn child hostage.
"We need to find him right now," I growled, holstering my weapon and sprinting past Michael toward the elevator.
Michael followed closely behind, frantically dialing numbers on his encrypted phone to mobilize our strike teams.
We descended into the underground garage, jumping into my armored SUV as the heavy engine roared to life.
"Elias has a private server farm in the financial district where he hides the syndicate's ghost accounts," Michael informed me.
"Drive," I commanded, pulling an assault rifle from the hidden compartment under the backseat.
We sped through the empty, rain-slicked streets of Chicago, blowing through red lights with reckless desperation.
I spent the entire ride trying to understand why Elias would turn on me after twenty years of absolute loyalty.
He was the one who warned me about the dangers of love in our business, but he had always protected Claire.
We arrived at the sleek, glass-fronted corporate building and bypassed the lobby security with our administrative override cards.
The elevator ride to the forty-second floor felt like an agonizing eternity of silence and rising tension.
When the doors finally chimed open, the overwhelming scent of copper and gunpowder immediately hit my senses.
The pristine white marble floors of the server room were covered in deep, pooling crimson blood.
Four heavily armed mercenaries lay dead in the hallway, their bodies completely riddled with precise bullet holes.
I raised my rifle, sweeping the room for any signs of movement or hidden threats waiting in the shadows.
In the center of the room, Elias Thorne was slumped over a massive computer console, gasping for shallow breaths.
I rushed over to him, grabbing him by the collar of his expensive, blood-soaked Italian suit.
"Where is she, Elias?" I roared, shaking the dying man as his eyes rolled back in his head.
Elias coughed, a thin trail of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as he offered a weak, pathetic smile.
"You were always so blind, Daniel, you never saw the true predator standing right next to you," he wheezed.
He weakly raised a trembling hand, pointing toward the massive security monitor mounted on the far wall.
The screen displayed a paused security footage frame from exactly ten minutes ago.
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I stared at the monitor, my jaw dropping in absolute, paralyzed horror as I processed the image.
The footage showed Claire calmly executing the mercenaries with a suppressed pistol, her face completely devoid of emotion.
