Chapter 5 - Shattered Glass
Before Julian could answer, the lights in the penthouse flickered and died, plunging the massive loft into complete darkness.
The low hum of the climate control system ground to a halt. A heartbeat later, the heavy reinforced steel doors of the private elevator echoed with a sharp, electronic beep—the sound of an external override sequence being initiated.
“Get down!” Julian roared, launching himself across the room.
He slammed into Clara just as the expansive glass wall overlooking the skyline exploded inward. A barrage of high-caliber sniper rounds shattered the reinforced panes, showering the darkened living room in a deadly rain of jagged ice and glass.
Clara gasped as Julian hit the floor with her, using his large, heavy body to completely shield her from the razor-sharp debris. He rolled them expertly behind the massive, bulletproof marble kitchen island just as a second volley of automatic fire tore through the velvet sofa where she had been sitting moments before.
“Marcus!” Julian shouted into his wrist-mounted comms unit over the deafening roar of gunfire. “We have an active breach on the top floor! Perimeter security is compromised!”
“Engaging targets in the lobby now, Boss!” Marcus’s voice crackled back through the comms, accompanied by the distinct, rhythmic pop of return gunfire. “They cut the building’s primary fiber-optic lines! It’s a coordinated assault team—heavy armor, thermal optics! You need to evacuate via the emergency chute now!”
In the darkness of the kitchen, Julian pulled a heavy, suppressed tactical handgun from a holster beneath his arm. He looked down at Clara, his blue eyes glowing with a fierce, protective intensity in the dim moonlight filtering through the shattered windows.
“Can you run on those feet?” he asked urgently.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” she breathed, gripping the edge of the marble counter to steady her trembling knees.
“That’s my girl,” Julian said, the faint hint of a fierce, proud smile touching his face despite the chaos erupting around them.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, encrypted USB drive, and pressed it into her palm, closing her fingers tightly around the cold metal.
“This contains the master encryption keys for my personal server farm,” he said, his voice dropping to an absolute, commanding whisper. “Whatever happens in the next ten minutes, you do not let go of this drive. If they kill me, you take this to Marcus, and you use it to destroy the registry before they can open it.”
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Clara’s chest tightened with a sudden, overwhelming panic that had nothing to do with the gunfire. She grabbed the lapel of his shirt, pulling him down toward her.
“You are not dying tonight, Julian Thorne,” she said fiercely. “I didn’t survive a blizzard and four weeks of your miserable audit just to watch you get taken out by a cheap hit squad.”
