My daughter choked out, “Dad, help,” moments before the call went completely silent. I raced down the highway at 100 mph, driving straight toward her in-laws’ mansion. When I got there, my son-in-law stood across the porch, holding a baseball bat with a smug grin on his face. “This is a private family matter,” he said icily. “Your daughter needed to be disciplined.”

I slammed the fire extinguisher into the glass a second time.

The bulletproof pane shattered entirely, raining thick shards of glass over Arthur.

He screamed and tried to crawl backward across the expensive floor tiles.

I grabbed him by the collar of his silk robe and dragged him brutally to his feet.

"Where is she?" I roared, slamming him violently against the metal servers.

Arthur coughed up blood, but the wicked smile returned to his lips.

"You are already too late," he gasped.

He pointed a shaking finger toward a heavy vault door at the far end of the room.

"Julian is securing the primary asset right now."

I dropped Arthur to the floor and sprinted toward the massive circular vault door.

A thick pane of reinforced glass allowed me to see inside the heavily fortified room.

Julian was standing inside, his shoulder heavily bandaged from the earlier gunshot.

He was holding a sharp hunting knife directly against Audrey's throat.

Audrey was tied firmly to a steel chair, her face bruised and covered in dried blood.

She looked at me through the thick glass, her eyes wide with absolute terror.

"Dad!" her muffled voice barely penetrated the thick vault walls.

Julian looked up and smiled maliciously when he saw me standing outside.

He walked over to a metal keypad mounted on the inside wall.

He punched in a rapid sequence of numbers.

A loud electronic siren began blaring throughout the entire subterranean complex.

A digital countdown timer suddenly appeared on a large monitor above the vault door.

It started exactly at five minutes.

"I rigged the entire foundation of this house with military-grade explosives," Julian yelled through the intercom system.

"The police are surrounding the house, but they won't come inside until the timer hits zero."

Julian pressed the hunting knife a little harder against Audrey's pale skin.

"You get to watch her die, David, just like you watched her mother die."

I didn't waste time screaming threats at a dead man.

I opened a small metal panel on the wall next to the heavy vault door.

Inside were dozens of complicated, multi-colored wires connecting the locking mechanism.

“Which daughter is yours?” should have been a harmless question

The first wineglass shattered at 8:07 p.m

The moment the mafia boss’s wife called me “an illiterate servant,”

I had exactly four minutes and twenty seconds to bypass the most advanced security lock in the country.

I pulled out my tactical knife and started cutting.

Chapter 7 - The Ticking Clock