Chapter 5 - The Traitor's Face
Elena pressed her hands against the glowing security monitors, her breath catching in her throat.
Grant Mercer was pointing his weapon down at Damian’s unmoving body.
"No," Salvatore whispered from the chair behind her, his voice breaking.
Grant reached down, grabbed Damian by the collar of his ruined suit, and dragged him out of the camera's view.
Elena frantically switched through the video feeds, trying to locate where Grant was taking him.
She found them in the grand library on the east wing of the estate.
Carlo Russo was sitting in Damian’s favorite leather armchair, smoking a cigar.
Grant dumped Damian onto the rug at Carlo's feet and stepped back.
Damian groaned, rolling onto his side as a pool of blood formed beneath his ribs.
He was still alive, but he was badly wounded.
"You always were too sentimental, Damian," Carlo said, blowing a cloud of thick gray smoke.
"You kept your weak father alive, and it made you soft."
Damian coughed, glaring up at his uncle with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"You killed my mother," Damian spat, his voice raspy.
"It was just business," Carlo replied smoothly.
"She wanted to take the family legitimate, and that would have cost me millions."
Carlo gestured to Grant Mercer with a slight wave of his hand.
"Grant here understands business," Carlo praised the traitor.
"I offered him double his salary to open the front gates tonight."
Damian looked at his head of security, the betrayal cutting deeper than the bullet wound in his side.
Down in the panic room, Elena realized nobody was coming to save them.
If Damian died, Carlo would eventually blow the vault door open and kill Salvatore anyway.
She had to do something completely reckless.
Elena turned to the control console that managed the mansion's smart systems.
"What are you doing?" Salvatore asked, watching her rapidly type on the keyboard.
"I manage this estate's electrical grid from my iPad every single day," Elena explained.
She overrode the security protocols and accessed the mansion's fire suppression system.
She did not activate the water sprinklers.
Instead, she activated the Halon gas system in the grand library.
It was designed to suck all the oxygen out of the room to kill a fire without damaging the expensive books.
On the monitor, thick white gas began pouring from the ceiling vents in the library.
Carlo and Grant instantly started coughing, dropping to their knees as the oxygen vanished.
Damian, already on the floor where the remaining air lingered, realized what was happening.
He used his last ounce of strength to grab a heavy brass bookend from the lowest shelf.
Damian swung the brass weight upward, cracking Grant Mercer perfectly across the jaw.
Grant collapsed, completely unconscious.
Damian crawled toward the heavy wooden doors, gasping for breath as he escaped the gas-filled room.
He locked the library doors from the outside, trapping his uncle inside the suffocating chamber.
Elena cheered loudly in the panic room, a massive smile breaking across her face.
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But her victory was cut brutally short when the heavy steel door of their panic room suddenly began to groan.
Sparks flew from the locking mechanism as someone on the outside started cutting through the vault with a thermal torch.
