Chapter 6 - The Digital War.The smell of cordite and pulverized marble hung heavy in the air.
Bullets continued to shred the expensive interior of my penthouse, tearing through priceless artwork like paper.
I pressed my back tightly against the ruined kitchen island, my mind racing far faster than my elevated heartbeat.
Andrew was nowhere near smart enough to orchestrate a high-level cyber heist on his own.
He had to be working with a highly skilled insider, someone who deeply understood the digital architecture of Escalante Holdings.
Victor forcefully slammed a fresh magazine into his submachine gun, tossing the empty one onto the debris-covered floor.
"We need to move now, Ms. Escalante!" Victor shouted over the deafening roar of automatic gunfire.
"If they manage to flank the kitchen, we will be entirely surrounded with no exit strategy."
I nodded sharply, gripping my pistol with white-knuckled intensity.
"We are going to the secure server room in the basement," I declared, my voice cold and unwavering.
"I have to physically disconnect the mainframe before Andrew's hacker drains the offshore accounts."
Victor threw a flashbang grenade over the counter, yelling for me to cover my eyes.
A blinding white light erupted in the hallway, followed immediately by a concussive boom that rattled my teeth.
The mercenaries screamed in pain, momentarily blinded and disoriented by the blast.
We broke from our cover, sprinting through the smoke-filled corridor toward the reinforced emergency stairwell.
I fired two precise shots into the chest of a staggering mercenary as we rushed past him.
He dropped instantly, his heavy tactical gear crashing loudly against the hardwood floor.
We burst through the stairwell doors, the heavy steel slamming shut behind us and locking automatically.
"The servers are sixty floors down," Victor stated, checking the biometric lock on the door.
"We cannot take the elevator because they have likely compromised the building's electrical grid."
Without wasting another second, we began the grueling descent down the spiraling concrete stairs.
My expensive designer heels were immediately discarded; I ran barefoot down the cold, abrasive steps.
As we ran, I pulled out my encrypted mobile device and dialed my father's chief cybersecurity engineer.
The line connected amidst a flurry of panicked typing sounds in the background.
"Ms. Escalante, we are under a massive, coordinated digital assault," the engineer yelled frantically.
"They are bypassing our secondary firewalls using a ghost protocol that only a senior board member would possess."
My blood ran ice cold as the reality of the situation fully set in.
"Who issued the protocol?" I demanded, my breath growing ragged from the endless stairs.
"The digital signature belongs to Richard, the senior vice president you spared this morning," the engineer revealed.
I cursed violently under my breath.
Richard had not betrayed Andrew to save his own skin; he had done it to infiltrate my inner circle.
They had staged the entire boardroom surrender just to get closer to the Escalante mainframe.
"How much time until they breach the primary offshore vault?" I asked, pushing my aching legs to move faster.
"Less than four minutes, ma'am," the engineer replied grimly.
"If you do not manually sever the hardline in the basement, billions of dollars will vanish into untraceable crypto wallets."
We finally reached the subterranean level, kicking the heavy basement doors open with brutal force.
The server room was at the far end of a long, dimly lit corridor.
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But standing between us and the servers were four more heavily armed mercenaries, guarding the entrance.
Andrew was not playing a corporate game anymore; this was an absolute war for survival.
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