SHE THREW HER 4-YEAR-OLD STEPDAUGHTER INTO A FOUNTAIN IN FRONT OF 200 GUESTS! The little girl’s heartbreaking words to her father left everyone speechless. But when a guest revealed what her phone had recorded, the stepmother’s darkest secret began to unravel… / Chapter 18 / 40

Chapter 18 - The Ambush in the Hall of Mirrors

*CRACK!*

A high-caliber rifle round shattered the window behind Daniel, punching a hole through the heart monitor and showering Eleanor's bed in crystalline shards of safety glass.

Marcus returned fire through the shattered doorway, the concussive boom of his carbine deafening in the enclosed room. "SNIPERS ON THE ROOF! WE HAVE MULTIPLE BOGEYS IN THE CORRIDOR! WE ARE PINNED DOWN!"

"Get Eleanor off that bed!" Daniel ordered, unhooking the IV line and scooping Eleanor’s feather-light body into his arms.

Hannah pulled the trauma kit tight against her chest and unholstered her sidearm, covering the doorway as Marcus laid down suppressive fire. "To the service elevator! The blueprints show an industrial laundry chute down to the basement tunnels!"

They moved in a combat wedge down the decaying hallway. Shadows darted across the flickering lights. Victoria’s mercenaries, armed with submachine guns and wearing unmarked tactical vests, were closing in from both wings.

"VALE!" a voice screamed from the far end of the corridor.

Stepping through the smoke of a deployed tear-gas canister was Victoria Vance. She was clad in black combat fatigues, an MPX submachine gun resting casually in her arms. Her face was bruised from her prison escape, but her eyes burned with the manic, apocalyptic euphoria of a woman who had burned down the world and had nothing left to lose.

Beside her stood an older man with silver hair, an impeccably tailored three-piece suit, and eyes like chipped flint: Arthur Vance.

"Put my wife down, Daniel," Arthur Vance commanded, his voice vibrating through the corridor. "She’s the single most valuable asset this company has ever engineered. That compound in her blood is worth forty billion dollars."

"She’s my wife, Arthur!" Daniel roared back, shielding Eleanor behind a concrete pillar. "And you’re going to die in this asylum!"

"Your wife?" Victoria laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls like broken glass. "Eleanor was Arthur’s legal ward before you ever met her, you idiot! Her patents belong to the Vance dynasty! You were just the useful wall street bank account we needed to fund the human clinical trials!"

Victoria raised her weapon, aiming directly at Hannah. "And you... the little nanny who thought she could play hero. I should have shoved you into that fountain alongside Clara."

"Try it, Victoria," Hannah said coldly, raising her Glock with both hands, her stance perfectly still, her finger steady on the trigger. "I’m not the scared girl from St. Jude’s anymore."

"ENOUGH!" Arthur Vance snapped, raising a detonator switch in his left hand. "The entire lower floor is rigged with C4. You hand Eleanor over, or we bury all of us under two hundred tons of Adirondack granite."

Eleanor, barely conscious, reached her frail hand up, touching Daniel’s cheek. "The drive... Daniel... Clara's blood..."