Chapter 8 - The Desperate Measure
"Daniel!" Victoria screamed, dropping to her knees and pressing her hands aggressively against his bleeding stomach.
Warm blood pooled rapidly between her fingers as the billionaire groaned in intense physical agony.
"I am fine, just secure the secondary blast doors," he grunted, trying weakly to push her away.
"Shut up and stop moving," she commanded, tearing a large strip of fabric from her expensive designer skirt.
She packed the makeshift bandage tightly against the gunshot wound, applying desperate pressure to stop the hemorrhaging.
On the other side of the heavy steel doors, the Russian mercenaries were furiously firing automatic weapons at the barricade.
The reinforced titanium held strong, but the digital locking mechanism was slowly beginning to violently spark and fail.
"They will breach that door in less than ten minutes," Daniel coughed, his face turning dangerously pale.
"We are sixty floors up with no elevators and completely surrounded, we have to call the police," Victoria panicked.
"The police are on Richard's payroll, they will just hand us directly back to the syndicate," Daniel revealed weakly.
He pulled his encrypted mobile phone from his pocket with a violently trembling hand.
"There is only one way to end this nightmare permanently," he whispered, unlocking the screen with his face.
He opened a highly classified application and typed in a complex, twenty-digit authorization code.
"What are you doing?" Victoria asked, watching the loading bar on the screen slowly fill with green light.
"I just transferred the entire five hundred million dollar investment directly into the Russian syndicate's offshore accounts," Daniel stated.
Victoria stared at him in sheer disbelief, completely incapable of processing his insane strategy.
"You just paid the men trying to murder us?" she asked, thinking the blood loss had destroyed his mind.
"I didn't pay them, I legally bought the debt they owe to their own dangerous superiors," he smirked weakly.
Suddenly, the violent gunfire on the other side of the steel blast doors ceased completely.
A heavy, terrifying silence fell over the executive floor, broken only by the sound of a ringing cell phone inside the vault.
Through the security monitors, Victoria watched the lead mercenary answer his phone with a confused expression.
The man's face instantly drained of all color as he listened to the furious screaming of his Russian boss.
The mercenary hung up the phone, turned around slowly, and aimed his automatic weapon directly at Richard Hartwell's chest.
"Mr. Torres just became our supreme employer, which means your contract is officially terminated," the mercenary growled at Richard.
Victoria watched in horror as the men she feared suddenly became her father's executioners.
But before the mercenary could pull the trigger, the glass windows of the executive floor completely shattered inward.
Three heavily armed helicopters hovered directly outside, shining blinding spotlights into the devastated corporate tower.
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A booming voice echoed over a massive loudspeaker, completely freezing everyone in their tracks.
"This is the Central Intelligence Agency, drop your weapons immediately or you will be neutralized."
