Chapter 18 - The Black Site on the River
Instead of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, the unmarked black transport van sped north, bypassing all federal holding facilities and diving straight into the desolate industrial badlands of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Emily sat shackled to the floor of the armored van, her wrists bleeding against the steel cuffs. The federal agents in the front cabin weren't speaking to dispatch; their tactical vests bore no serial numbers or agency patches.
Mercenaries.
Cassandra had purchased an entire extraction team to intercept the federal convoy before it ever reached the courthouse.
The van screeched to a halt inside an abandoned dry-dock warehouse. The air smelled of rust, dead fish, and salt water. The rear doors were yanked open, and Emily was dragged out, her boots kicking up clouds of industrial dust as she was forced into a rusted metal chair beneath a single, buzzing halogen bulb.
Standing in the shadows was not Cassandra, but a tall, impeccably dressed man holding an antique silver walking stick. When he stepped into the light, Emily felt her heart stop.
"Victor Drake," she whispered.
The brother of the late Victoria Drake. The former chief legal counsel of Sterling Enterprises who had allegedly committed suicide twelve years ago by leaping from the Brooklyn Bridge.
"You have your mother's fire, Miss Sterling," Victor said, his voice dry and crackling like autumn leaves under boots. "And unfortunately, her absolute lack of survival instinct."
"Cassandra thinks she's using you," Emily spat, tossing her hair back from her bruised face. "Just like she used Thomas. But you're the one who set this up. You let her take the blame for the wire transfers."
Victor chuckled, tapping his cane against the concrete. "Cassandra is a vanity-blinded sociopath who thinks a high-society comeback will erase twenty years of criminal exile. She doesn't understand that the world has moved past the Sterling family. The Leviathan Group doesn't care about Vance bloodlines or Sterling heritage. We care about the infrastructure codes."
Victor stepped forward, his eyes burning with maniacal intensity. "Your father didn't just leave forty billion dollars in cash and real estate, Emily. He buried the master encryption keys to the United States Northeast Electrical Grid in an offshore server bank. A project code-named *Prometheus*. And the decryption sequence is mapped to your DNA."
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"I don't know what you're talking about," Emily said through gritted teeth.
Victor pulled a specialized medical syringe from his velvet coat pocket, the three-inch titanium needle gleaming cruelly under the bulb. "You don't need to know, my dear. I only need four ounces of your bone marrow to crack the sequence. And after that... whether you survive the extraction is entirely a matter of biological luck."
