Chapter 6 - The Digital War
The air inside the bank vault was perfectly cold and completely still.
Darius slammed his fist against the bulletproof glass.
"Open this door!" he yelled at the treacherous bank manager.
The manager simply smirked, turned his back, and walked away.
"Marcus bought him off," Darius realized, pacing the confined space like a caged animal.
Nia did not panic.
She sat down on the marble floor and flipped her laptop open.
"We have forty-five minutes before Marcus realizes we are trapped here," she said calmly.
She plugged the silver flash drive into the USB port.
Lines of complex code and hidden banking terminals flooded her screen.
"I used to manage risk assessment for a reason, Darius," she reminded him.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard with breathtaking speed.
She was bypassing firewalls and hacking into the Cayman Island shell companies.
Darius watched her, completely mesmerized by the brilliance of the woman he had thrown away.
"I have access to his primary ledger," she announced ten minutes later.
"He has three hundred million dollars sitting in an untraceable account."
"Transfer it all to the federal authorities," Darius instructed.
"No," Nia said, a dangerous glint in her dark eyes.
"If I send it to the feds, it gets tied up in bureaucracy."
"I am transferring every single penny to the charity foundation your mother runs."
Darius smiled for the first time in three days.
"Do it," he agreed.
She hit the enter key, and a loading bar appeared on the screen.
It slowly crept toward one hundred percent.
The money vanished from Marcus's control forever.
"Now we have to get out of here," Darius said, looking at the heavy vault door.
He noticed a small electrical panel near the hinges of the door.
He grabbed a heavy metal lockbox from an empty shelf and smashed the panel open.
Sparks showered the marble floor as he tore the wiring apart with his bare hands.
The magnetic lock failed with a loud clank, and the heavy door swung open.
They ran up the stairs to the main lobby, only to find it completely empty.
The security guards were unconscious on the floor, and the glass entrance doors were shattered.
A single black phone rested on the reception desk, ringing loudly.
Darius picked it up slowly.
May you like
"You stole my money," Marcus whispered through the receiver, sounding completely unhinged.
"And now I am going to drop your son off the roof of your own building."
