Chapter 8 - The Vault of Glass and Bone
Elena looked down at her trembling hands, her knuckles whitening.
"When our mother died," Elena whispered, her voice bouncing faintly off the soot-stained brick walls of the boiler room, "Dante was twelve, and I was five. Our father was a tyrant who locked Dante in the cellar of the estate whenever he failed his tactical examinations. Dante used to hide beneath the floorboards of the wine cellar, carving marks into the stone—one mark for every night he survived."
She reached up, hooking two fingers into the collar of her shirt, pulling out a thin silver chain that had been embedded deep within the lining of her undergarments. Dangling from it was a small, ornate silver key shaped like a serpent swallowing its tail.
"He told me that if the world ever turned against us, the true ledger of the family wasn't in the bank vaults," Elena continued. "It was under the seventh flagstone in that cellar. Our father’s real journals. Proof of who we are. Proof of Marco’s theft thirty years ago."
Hollis took the key, feeling the cold weight of the metal. "The Moretti estate is in the North Ridge. It’s surrounded by twenty-foot gates and armed security."
"No," Elena said, shaking her head. "Dante isn't at the estate. Today is Thursday. Every Thursday at noon, Dante inspects the penthouse suites at Halloran Tower. The top three floors are his private fortress in the city center. That’s why I was in that alley last night... I was trying to climb the service shaft to reach him before Marco’s men caught me."
The irony struck Hollis like a physical blow. She had worked at Halloran Tower for eight months, mopping the marble floors of the grand lobby, polishing the brass elevators, completely oblivious that the king of the underworld occupied the clouds directly above her head.
"We can't walk into Halloran Tower through the front doors," Hollis said, calculating rapidly. "Every entrance will have Marco’s spotters watching for you."
"Then how do we get in?"
Hollis pulled her custodian passcard from her pocket, the blue lanyard worn thin at the edges.
"The executive service freight elevator," Hollis said. "It bypasses the main security concourse. It only responds to two keys: the building head of maintenance... and the master trash disposal pass."
She looked at Elena, taking in the girl’s bruised face, her aristocratic features, the bloody bandage beneath the flannel.
"Can you walk three miles through the steam tunnels?"
May you like
Elena pulled her shoulders back, a ghost of the Moretti steel surfacing in her violet eyes. "If it means watching Marco burn? I can walk across broken glass."
***
