Chapter 3 - The Coldest Blood
The sharp hiss of the ceiling vents was the first warning.
A pale, odorless mist began to drift down into the reinforced room, swirling around the halogen lights. The halon gas was designed to smother electrical fires by instantly displacing oxygen—and inside an airtight vault, it would suffocate a human in less than four minutes.
"Nico, the vents!" Rafe shouted, coughing as the air thinned instantly. "We need to override the HVAC system right now!"
"I can't access the building controls without unlocking the master partition on this drive," Nico said coldly. His fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, his eyes locked on the glowing terminal screen. "Mom routed the entire estate’s private network through this root directory before she passed."
Vivia leaned heavily against the desk, her face deathly pale, holding her bruised ribs with one hand. "The password... Nico, look at the note again."
Nico flattened the torn piece of yellowed paper beneath the desk lamp.
The handwriting was jagged, written during their mother's final days in hospice: If you are reading this, your father did not die of a heart attack, and Marcella was the last person in his room. Look to the day the empire fell.
"The day the empire fell?" Rafe muttered, his chest heaving as he fought for oxygen. "What the hell does that mean? The company's IPO? The day Dad got diagnosed?"
"No," Nico murmured, his gaze narrowing. "Not the company. The day Dad cut Marcella out of the trust fund."
Nico typed the date: 09-14-2018.
ACCESS DENIED. TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING.
The screen flashed bright red. A piercing warning chime sounded throughout the server room. The air grew heavier, cold and suffocating. Vivia collapsed onto her knees, gasping for breath.
"Nico... I can't breathe..." Vivia whispered, her lips turning a faint shade of blue.
Rafe grabbed an iron fire extinguisher from the wall and began smashing it against the heavy glass observation window looking into the wine cellar, but the bulletproof glass barely scuffed. "It's no use! Nico, guess again or we're dead!"
Nico stared at the screen, his mind racing through every memory of his father's final months. His father hadn't cared about the money. He had cared about one thing above all else.
"It wasn't a financial date," Nico whispered. "It was the day Mom walked away."
He typed in a second sequence: Vivia's birthdate.
PASSWORD ACCEPTED. DECRYPTING ROOT DIRECTORY.
The terminal screen refreshed instantly. A progress bar flashed to 100%, unlocking four hidden folders labeled with time-stamped surveillance footage, financial transfer logs, and autopsy toxicology reports.
Nico immediately clicked the HVAC control icon and punched the emergency ventilation purge.
Above them, the ceiling blowers roared to life with a deafening whine, sucking the toxic halon gas up through the industrial exhaust ducts and pumping fresh, pressurized outside air down into the vault.
Rafe fell to his knees beside Vivia, pulling her up and drawing deep, frantic breaths of clean air. "We got air! God damn it, we got air!"
Nico didn't celebrate. His eyes were glued to the screen.
He double-clicked the most recent file: a high-definition hidden camera feed timestamped three weeks prior, recorded inside their father's private bedroom at the family penthouse.
The video played with crystal-clear audio.
Their father, Arthur Vance, lay pale and frail in his medical bed, hooked up to an IV drip. The bedroom door opened, and Marcella stepped into the frame wearing a black trench coat. She walked straight to the bedside table, pulled a small glass vial and a syringe from her purse, and turned off the heart monitor's audio alarm.
"Marcella... what are you doing?" their father's weak voice rasped through the speakers.
"Securing my inheritance, Dad," Marcella's voice responded on the tape, cold and devoid of any human emotion. "You were going to hand fifty-one percent of the voting shares to Nico and that bastard girl. I worked fifteen years for this company. I won't let you give it away to a waitress's daughter."
"You're... insane..." Arthur gasped, trying to reach for the emergency call button.
Marcella grabbed his wrist, pinning it to the bed, and injected the clear liquid directly into his IV line. "Potassium chloride, Dad. In two minutes, your heart will stop. The coroner will call it natural cardiac arrest. Goodbye."
On the screen, Arthur began to convulse as Marcella calmly wiped down the syringe, dropped it back into her purse, and walked out of the room without looking back once.
Inside the vault, the silence was deafening.
Rafe stood frozen, tears of pure rage burning in his eyes, his fists shaking so violently his knuckles turned white. "She murdered him. That psycho murdered our father."
Nico's face turned completely hollow, every shred of warmth vanishing from his features. He pulled a thumb drive from his pocket, copied the entire video folder, and ejected the drive.
"She didn't just murder him, Rafe," Nico said, his voice deadly and quiet. "She used the forged power of attorney to transfer thirty million dollars into an offshore shell company this morning. And in twenty minutes, she's taking the private jet out of the country."
Just then, the security radio crackled again.
May you like
"Davis here," the guard barked. "The local police just arrived at the front gate. We're loading Marcella into the armored SUV at the helipad now. Cut the power to the basement and get to the cars!"
The lights in the vault clicked off, plunging them into pitch-black darkness.
