Chapter 6 - THE TRAP
"Julian!" Briggs shouted, rushing to the heavy door and throwing his shoulder against the solid steel. It didn't budge an inch.
Through the static of the intercom, Julian laughed quietly. "Save your breath, Briggs. That vault was built to withstand a bomb blast. The air supply in that room will last approximately four hours."
Ethan walked calmly over to the intercom wall unit. "You won't get away with this, Julian. Briggs's men are all over the estate."
"Briggs's men think you are upstairs having a private meeting with me in the library," Julian replied smoothly. "By the time anyone realizes you're missing, I will have signed the emergency executive transfer papers using the power of attorney Victoria's fake pregnancy helped establish."
"Victoria will talk," Ethan said into the speaker. "She's terrified."
"Victoria is currently being escorted off the property by my personal drivers," Julian said. "She will be on a private jet to South America within the hour. By tomorrow morning, she will be officially named an absconding fraud, and I will be the sole administrator of Harrington Global."
The intercom went dead with a sharp click of static.
Inside the vault, the air grew noticeably still as the ventilation fan slowed to a stop.
Briggs pulled out his service phone. "No signal. The stone walls are blocking everything."
Arthur Vance sat down heavily on the wooden chair near the desk, breathing heavily. "I shouldn't have brought you down here, Ethan. I led you straight into his trap."
Ethan didn't panic. He looked around the small stone room, his mind working through every piece of information he had acquired over the evening.
He looked at the desk, then at the filing cabinets, and finally at the ceiling where the main electrical conduit ran toward the wall.
"Briggs," Ethan said.
"Sir?"
"Where did Nora take Lily?"
"Up to your private apartment on the third floor, sir."
Ethan walked over to the electrical junction box on the far wall. "My grandfather built this estate in 1982. He was paranoid about security. He didn't just build a vault—he built a backup release system connected to his private master bedroom upstairs."
Ethan pulled a heavy metal screwdriver from the desk drawer and jammed it into the side of the junction box, tearing open the cover.
"If I short-circuit the master relay wires here," Ethan explained, his fingers moving with swift precision among the copper strands, "it will trigger an automatic security lock-override in my bedroom upstairs."
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"And how does that help us down here?" Vance asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Ethan looked back at them. "Because Lily is up there. And she knows how to follow instructions."
