Vanessa claimed Sophie injured herself on a garage door, until Luca noticed the blood, the wheelchair, and one terrified look that told him his mother was missing.

Vanessa shrieked—a piercing, blood-curdling wail of agony as the blade severed bone and tendon, pinning her hand to the desk. The gun slipped from her grasp.

"NOW!" I screamed.

In that split second of chaotic distraction, Luca moved with inhuman violence.

He didn't dive for his gun. He threw his entire body weight forward, slamming into the desk and overturning the heavy mahogany slab directly into Antonio’s torso. The remote detonator flew from Antonio’s hand, skidding across the polished floor.

*CRACK-CRACK.*

The ceiling snipers fired, their rounds shattering the marble tiles where Luca had stood half a second earlier.

"Matteo, BLOW THE GRID!" Luca roared into his hidden collar-mic.

From thirty floors below, an ear-splitting concussion rocked the Sovereign Tower. The entire building shuddered violently.

The lights went black.

The backup emergency sirens began to wail in deep, pulsing crimson light. The sniper sights blinked out as the electrical surge blew the upper circuit relays.

In the strobing red darkness, I grabbed the fallen pistol from the floor. Vanessa, sobbing and clutching her mutilated, bleeding hand, tried to scramble toward the private elevator. I stepped into her path and brought the steel grip of the gun down hard across her jaw. She crashed into the floor, unconscious, her blood pooling in the carpet.

"Mother!" Luca yelled, throwing himself in front of Donna Carmela’s wheelchair, using his body as a human shield as Antonio scrambled backward into the shadows of the study’s rear vault.

"Luca!" I shouted, rushing toward them. "The detonator! Where did it go?"

"Over there!" Carmela gasped, pointing toward the edge of the shattered desk.

I dove across the floor, my fingers wrapping around the remote detonator. I violently smashed the battery casing against the marble, crushing the circuit board to dust. The red LED on Carmela’s collar flickered twice and died.

Luca used his combat knife to slice through the heavy zip-ties and leather restraints binding his mother. He hauled her into his arms, tears finally escaping his amber eyes. "I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Mama."

"Luca... behind you!" Carmela suddenly screamed, her frail arm pointing toward the rear vault.

Through the flashing crimson strobe of the emergency sirens, the heavy titanium blast door of the private vault hissed open.

Antonio stood in the doorway. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, his suit torn, but in his hands was not a gun.

It was a heavy, military-grade briefcase terminal, tethered directly into the core mainframe of the Sovereign Tower. On its screen, a new timer was flashing violently.

*SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE: 00:01:59.*

"You think you’ve won, boy?" Antonio’s voice was distorted by the howling sirens, a ghastly, demonic laugh echoing from his chest. "I built this tower with fifty tons of industrial thermite lined along the central support pillars! If I don't leave this city with Julian Ward’s billions, no one leaves!"

The computerized voice of the tower chimed overhead through the intercom:

*[BLAST DOORS ENGAGING. PERIMETER SEAL INITIATED. IMPACT IN ONE HUNDRED SECONDS.]*

Massive, twelve-inch solid steel blast doors began descending from the ceiling, slamming down between the penthouse study and the elevator lobby—our only escape route.

*SLAM.*

The primary exits were sealing off one by one, cutting off the corridors.

"Sophie! Carmela! Move!" Luca roared, lifting his mother over his shoulder with one arm and grabbing my hand with the other, sprinting toward the final descending bulkhead that led to the service stairwell.

We sprinted across the slick marble.

The blast door was dropping fast—four feet from the ground, three feet...

Luca shoved his mother under the gap first. "Crawl, Mama! Dante is on the other side!"

Carmela scrambled through just as Dante’s voice echoed from the stairwell. "Boss! Sophie! Hurry!"

Luca grabbed me by the waist, ready to throw me beneath the falling steel slab.

"You first!" I screamed, pulling at his armor.

"Never!" Luca yelled.

Suddenly, a gunshot cracked from behind us.

A searing, blinding agony ripped through my left shoulder. The force of the high-caliber bullet spun me around, sending me crashing hard onto the marble.

I looked back through the smoke.

Vanessa was on her knees, her face covered in blood, Luca’s discarded backup revolver smoking in her trembling left hand. Her eyes were wide with psychotic madness. "Nobody leaves!" she shrieked.

"SOPHIE!" Luca screamed.

He lunged toward me, dropping to his knees, his hands catching my bleeding shoulder.

*SLAM.*

The final steel blast door hit the concrete floor behind him with the force of an earthquake.

The locking bolts engaged with a deafening, final hiss of hydraulic pressure.

Luca whipped around. The exit was sealed.

His mother and Dante were on the other side.

We were trapped.

Trapped on the 70th floor of a collapsing skyscraper with a madman, a dying sociopath, and eighty seconds left before fifty tons of thermite vaporized the tower.