Chapter 8 - The Final Stand on the 50th Floor
Before the federal agents could reach the executive floor, the elevator doors at the end of the hall opened with a soft electronic chime.
Out stepped Vance—the chief operating officer of Vanguard Tactical.
He was a massive man with a scarred neck, a shaved head, and eyes that had long since forgotten how to feel empathy. He wore a plain grey suit designed to conceal the automatic weapon tucked beneath his arm.
He had realized the hit was burned the moment his men in Queens stopped answering their radios. He wasn't here to save Gerald Forsythe anymore; he was here to eliminate the witnesses and burn the building’s server architecture before the FBI cleared the lobby.
"Clear the room!" Adrien roared, his voice cutting through the panic in the boardroom like a foghorn.
He shoved Victoria behind the thick mahogany table just as Vance pulled a suppressed submachine gun from beneath his jacket.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
Glass windows shattered into thousands of cascading shards, rain and seventy-mile-an-hour wind tearing through the fifty-floor executive suite. Board members screamed, throwing themselves beneath the table, crawling over each other in a frantic stampede toward the rear emergency exit.
Gerald Forsythe tried to run toward Vance, shouting frantically, "Kill them! Kill both of them!"
Vance didn't even look at Forsythe. He raised the stock of his weapon and struck Forsythe across the temple, sending the corrupt board member crashing unconscious onto the floor.
Adrien didn't have his Sig Sauer—he couldn't bring a firearm past the building's lobby metal detectors without triggering an immediate federal lockdown. He had only his hands, his training, and three seconds of surprise.
Adrien launched himself over the long mahogany table.
He landed on Vance before the mercenary could bring the barrel of the submachine gun up to bear. They crashed together into the glass wall, the force of the impact sending cracked spiderwebs shooting thirty feet up the reinforced pane.
Vance was younger, thirty pounds heavier, and fueled by pure survival adrenaline. He drove an elbow into Adrien’s ribs, forcing a heavy gasp of air from the older man’s lungs, and pressed the hot barrel of the weapon against Adrien’s stomach.
Adrien didn't pull back.
He grabbed the weapon’s slide, thrusting his thumb behind the hammer to prevent the firing pin from striking, and rammed his forehead directly into Vance’s nose.
The crunch was loud enough to be heard over the wind howling through the broken windows.
Vance roared in pain, blood spurting across his face, but he didn't drop the weapon. He hooked a leg around Adrien’s knee, pulling both of them down onto the glass-strewn carpet.
They tumbled across the floor, striking chairs, overturning water carafes.
Victoria watched from beneath the table, her heart stopping as she saw Vance gain the top position, his heavy hands locking around Adrien’s throat, pressing him down into the shattered glass.
"You're old, SEAL," Vance growled through his broken nose, his fingers digging into Adrien’s windpipe. "You're twenty years past your prime."
Adrien couldn't breathe. Dark spots danced before his eyes. His body screamed with the weight of eleven years of combat injuries, cold nights, and three years of sitting in a driver's seat.
Then, through the haze of blacking out, he saw a vision in his mind.
He saw Lily sitting at the kitchen table with her bowl of cereal.
Are you going to be sad forever?
No.
Why?
Because I'm not done yet.
Adrien’s eyes opened wide. The cold, lethal clarity returned with terrifying force.
He reached up with both hands, driving his thumbs directly into the soft tissue behind Vance’s jawline—a pressure point designed to cause instant, overwhelming neurological shock.
Vance shrieked, his grip instantly loosening.
Adrien whipped his hips to the left, bridging his body with explosive power, flipping the two-hundred-and-forty-pound mercenary onto his back.
Adrien didn't waste a microsecond. He mounted Vance, trapped the man’s right arm beneath his knee, and drove a precise, short-range palm strike directly into Vance’s chin, followed by a neck-crank that rendered the Vanguard commander instantly unconscious.
The room went completely quiet, save for the howling wind and the sound of Adrien’s ragged, heavy breathing.
He sat on top of the fallen mercenary for five seconds, his chest heaving, his hands covered in small glass cuts.
Then he stood up slowly. He wiped a streak of blood from his forehead with the back of his sleeve, turned around, and looked toward the mahogany table.
Victoria was crawling out from beneath the wood, her hair wild, her hands covered in dust, looking at him with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe.
Adrien held out his hand.
"Are you alright, Ms. Sterling?" he asked softly, his voice raspy from the chokehold.
Victoria looked at his rough, calloused hand—the hand that had just saved her life for the third time in twelve hours.
She took it.
He pulled her effortlessly to her feet.
As the heavy steel doors of the boardroom were thrown open and NYPD SWAT officers in tactical gear flooded the room with rifles raised, Victoria Sterling didn't look at the police. She didn't look at the press cameras gathering in the lobby downstairs.
May you like
She looked at her driver, reached up with a soft, trembling hand, and gently wiped the blood from his cheekbone.
"My name is Victoria," she whispered softly. "And you are never sitting in the front seat alone again."
