Chapter 6 - The Steel Cell
D’Angelo didn't waste another second. He raised the Sig Sauer and shot the hit team leader through the chest, ending the man’s words before he could finish his sentence.
He turned and sprinted through the waterlogged house, his boots splashing across the ruined marble floors. The alarm was still blaring, red and white lights strobing across the walls, but he ignored it.
He reached the heavy wooden door leading to the basement, vaulted down the concrete stairs three at a time, and skidded into the cool air of the wine cellar.
The heavy steel door of the safe room was closed, but the digital display beside the keypad was flashing yellow instead of green.
SYSTEM OVERRIDE IN PROGRESS.
D’Angelo swore loudly.
Camila hadn't just been afraid. She had been playing him from the start. She knew the location of the safe room because she was the one who had helped choose the contractor who installed it. And she knew that inside the vault, behind the panel where the survival supplies were stored, sat the secondary terminal for the estate’s master encrypted server.
He stepped up to the panel and pressed his thumb against the biometric scanner.
ACCESS DENIED. MANUAL LOCKOUT INITIATED FROM INTERIOR.
“Camila!” D’Angelo slammed his heavy fist against the reinforced steel door. His voice boomed through the subterranean concrete hall. “Open this door!”
From inside, through the thick intercom speaker mounted beside the frame, her voice came through—raspy, high-pitched, but no longer weeping. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, desperate calculus.
“I can’t do that, D’Angelo,” she said over the static of the speaker. “If I open this door, you’ll kill me.”
“You don't know what you’re doing!” D’Angelo barked. “If you transfer those ledgers to Marco, he will liquidate every account in the network! It won't just ruin me—it will trigger a war across three continents! Thousands of people will die!”
“I don't care about thousands of people!” she spat back. “I care about me! Marco promised me twenty percent of whatever is in those accounts if I uploaded the root key directly from the terminal! That’s fifty million dollars, D’Angelo! I can buy a new life, a new name, a new face!”
D’Angelo leaned his forehead against the cold steel of the door. He was exhausted, wet, and bleeding from a scrape on his temple he hadn't even noticed until now.
“He’s going to kill you, Camila,” he said softly, his voice dropping into a dangerous, measured tone. “The moment that upload bar reaches one hundred percent, Marco’s techs in Milan will burn the server nodes to cover their tracks. The signal overload will trigger the thermal dump unit inside that vault. You’re going to suffocate in there.”
There was a silence on the line. For five seconds, the only sound was the hum of the cooling fans inside the electronics panel.
“You’re lying,” she said, though her voice wobbled slightly. “You’re just trying to get me to open the door.”
“Ask the maid,” D’Angelo said coldly. “She’s in there with you. Ask her if she smells the gas.”
Inside the safe room, Nancy was standing against the far wall, holding the pump-action shotgun leveled at Camila’s back. Camila was hunched over a small silver terminal mounted into the wall, her fingers flying across a mechanical keyboard as progress bars flashed green across the screen.
UPLOAD PROGRESS: 68%
Nancy listened to D’Angelo’s voice through the wall speaker. She looked up at the ceiling vents. A faint, sweet chemical odor—like burnt almonds—was beginning to drift down from the air filtration unit.
“He’s not lying,” Nancy said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline pouring through her veins. “The air smells wrong.”
Camila didn't look back. “Shut up! You’re just a maid! You don't know anything about server security!”
“I know what burnt insulation smells like,” Nancy said, stepping forward. She raised the heavy steel butt of the shotgun. “And I know that man outside built this room to protect himself, not you.”
“Don't touch me!” Camila screamed, her fingers hitting the key to confirm the second data block.
UPLOAD PROGRESS: 82%
Nancy didn't hesitate. She swung the shotgun with all the strength in her arms, slamming the heavy wooden stock directly into the side of Camila’s neck.
Camila let out a sharp cry and collapsed sideways off the stool, crashing onto the concrete floor. She clutched her neck, gasping for air, her eyes wide with shock.
Nancy stepped over her, pulled the flathead screwdriver from her apron pocket, and jammed it into the main fiber-optic cable running from the wall into the back of the terminal. She twisted the tool with all her weight, snapping the thick glass-core cables inside the plastic conduit.
The terminal screen instantly flickered red.
CONNECTION TERMINATED. UPLOAD FAILED AT 87%.
Outside in the hallway, the yellow light on the door keypad stopped flashing and turned a solid, angry crimson. An alarm began to chirp softly from the electronic lock mechanism.
D’Angelo heard the sharp SNAP of the fiber cable through the intercom speaker, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.
“Nancy!” he called out through the speaker. “Are you alright?”
“I broke the computer!” Nancy’s voice came back, strained and breathless. “And I hit her! But the door is locked from the inside!”
“Look at the panel to the left of the door,” D’Angelo instructed quickly. “There’s a red mechanical lever behind a glass casing. Break the glass and pull the lever down. It disengages the hydraulic lock manually.”
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Inside the room, Nancy looked at the wall beside the heavy door. A small glass box housed a thick iron lever painted bright red. She didn't hesitate. She raised the screwdriver, smashed the thin glass panel, reached inside, and yanked the lever down with both hands.
With a heavy, mechanical clunk of gears and releasing pressure, the heavy steel door swung outward six inches.
