Chapter 24 - The Black Alpine Fortress
The Baur au Lac was fortified like an embassy under siege. Black Mercedes vans with darkened windows lined the cobblestone drive. Heavily armed private security personnel wearing earpieces and tactical wool coats stood at five-meter intervals around the perimeter.
"We can't walk in through the front," Sofia warned from the seat beside me, her eyes darting between the armed guards. "They have facial recognition sweeps at every revolving door. If Alexander is using federal banking protocols, they have diplomatic immunity cover."
"I don't need a door," I replied coldly, pulling a small titanium device from my briefcase. "My father designed this security architecture twenty years ago. He built it around the presumption that he was the smartest predator in the room. He forgot that he taught me how to read his blueprints."
Ten minutes later, we were inside the hotel’s subterranean service tunnels, having bribed the laundry master with a hundred thousand Swiss francs wired to a bank in Singapore. The smell of steam, starch, and industrial bleach masked the metallic scent of adrenaline rushing through my veins.
We bypassed the service elevators and took the reinforced fire stairs up to the grand ballroom mezzanine. The air grew thicker, vibrating with the low, resonant hum of sixty international journalists, financial analysts, and corporate titans murmuring in anticipation.
I slipped into the shadows behind the heavy velvet drapes overlooking the podium.
And there he was.
Alexander Vance. Seventy-two years old, his silver hair cropped with military precision, his spine straight as an iron girder. He wore a charcoal bespoke suit made by the same London tailor who had fitted him for thirty years. There was no sign of a plane crash. No scars. No frailty. Only the same cold, predatory gaze that had dominated my nightmares for as long as I could remember.
Beside him stood someone else. Someone who made my stomach churn with pure, unadulterated revulsion.
Camilla.
She wasn't wearing the disheveled, terrified expression she had worn in the Monterrey mansion. She was draped in a cream cashmere dress, her diamond earrings catching the flashbulbs, cradling her pregnant belly with a look of smug, victorious entitlement.
And on her left, looking scrubbed, polished, and wearing a fresh five-figure suit, was Ricardo.
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They hadn't been destroyed. They had been extracted.
***
