Chapter 6 - The Breach
Dante shoved Clara violently away, completely abandoning the woman who had ruined his life.
He sprinted toward the emergency stairwell, taking the concrete steps three at a time, his heart hammering with a terrifying, unfamiliar panic.
He had spent nine years believing he had nothing left to lose.
Now, the thought of losing the exhausted, brilliant secretary who had just taught him how to laugh again was completely unbearable.
He kicked open the heavy fire door to the forty-second floor, his weapon raised and ready to kill.
The corridor was filled with thick, gray smoke and the acrid smell of high-grade C4 explosives.
The heavy oak double doors to his office had been completely blown off their hinges, splintered wood scattered across the Persian rug.
Dante rushed into the ruined office, coughing heavily in the smoke.
“Emily!” he yelled, sweeping the room with his pistol.
The reclaimed walnut desk was heavily damaged, but the fire suppression system had prevented the blast from igniting the room.
Dante searched the corners, dread pooling in his stomach like lead.
Emily was gone.
Her laptop, her sensible cardigan, and her coffee mug were still sitting perfectly arranged on her desk.
But she had vanished.
Dante quickly checked the private bathroom and the hidden safe, but both were completely empty.
He tapped his encrypted earpiece, calling his security command center.
“Marco! Status report now!” Dante demanded.
“Boss, we have a massive breach,” Marco’s frantic voice crackled through the earpiece.
“The blast knocked out the primary camera feeds. But the backup system caught a heavily armed extraction team moving down the exterior window washing rig.”
“Did they take Emily?”
“Yes, Boss. Four men. They grabbed her right after the explosion and repelled down the side of the building.”
Dante’s blood ran completely cold.
This wasn't the FBI, and it certainly wasn't Clara's sloppy extortion attempt.
This was a highly sophisticated, military-grade extraction orchestrated by someone with massive resources.
“Where did they go?” Dante asked, his voice deadly calm.
“They loaded her into an armored black SUV in the alleyway. We are tracking the vehicle via satellite now.”
“Send the coordinates to my phone and assemble the strike team,” Dante ordered, turning to leave the ruined office.
“We are going to war.”
As Dante turned toward the door, a faint, rhythmic tapping sound caught his attention.
He stopped, listening closely through the blaring fire alarms.
The tapping was coming from the air conditioning vent located near the floorboards behind his desk.
Dante quickly knelt down and pried the metal grate off with his bare hands.
Shining his tactical flashlight into the dark, narrow duct, he expected to find a hidden bomb.
Instead, he saw Emily.
She was crammed awkwardly into the tight metal space, clutching her backup tablet tightly against her chest.
She was covered in dust and soot, but her sensible glasses were still perfectly balanced on her nose.
Dante let out a massive, shuddering breath of pure relief, reaching his hand into the duct.
“Emily,” he breathed, helping her squeeze out of the tight space.
“Are you hurt?”
Emily stood up, dusting off her gray skirt with annoyed efficiency.
“I am perfectly fine, Mr. Marino,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
“But your security team is apparently blind. The men who repelled down the window washing rig took your life-sized cardboard cutout of the new promotional shipping mascot, not me.”
Dante stared at her, utterly stunned by her incredible survival instincts.
“You hid in the air duct?”
“When armed men blow up a door, hiding is generally standard administrative procedure,” Emily pointed out dryly.
She tapped the screen of her tablet, bringing up a complex GPS tracking map.
“More importantly, I managed to slip a highly magnetized GPS tracker into the pocket of the lead attacker's tactical vest while he was busy kidnapping the cardboard cutout.”
Dante looked at the glowing red dot moving rapidly across the digital map.
“You tagged them?” Dante asked, a dangerous, predatory smile finally returning to his face.
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“I am your new Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Marino,” Emily stated firmly.
“I don't appreciate unauthorized personnel blowing up my office on my first day. We are going to find them, and we are going to audit them.”
