The Mafia Boss Came Home Early and Caught His Fiancée Throwing His 3-Year-Old Daughter to the Ground—Then the Little Girl Pointed at the Camera Above the Pool. What the Nanny Revealed Next Exposed Everything. / Chapter 58 / 60

Chapter 58 - The Fall of the Caroline Center

The glass double doors of the Caroline Center’s grand entrance shattered under a hail of suppressed armor-piercing gunfire.

Ethan led the charge, his combat rifle barking in lethal, controlled three-round bursts. Two Sovereign sentries stationed in the marble atrium crumpled to the ground before they could raise their assault weapons. Dante and his operators swept forward in a tight wedge formation, laying down a devastating field of suppressive fire that pulverized the decorative marble pillars into blinding white dust.

"Elena! Move Sophie into the acoustic access corridor!" Ethan shouted over the deafening roar of automatic weapons. "Patel, Maria, stay right behind them!"

From the grand mezzanine above, a dozen Sovereign operatives opened fire with submachine guns. Glass chandeliers worth millions shattered overhead, raining glittering, lethal shards across the polished red-carpeted floors.

Ethan dodged behind a massive bronze statue of an orchestra conductor, pulling Nikolai behind the ballistic shield mounted to his shoulder. He pulled a flashbang grenade from his vest, pulled the pin with his teeth, and banked it off the mezzanine balcony wall.

A blinding flash and a concussive bang shattered the upper level. The enemy fire ceased for three vital seconds.

"Move! Now!" Ethan roared.

Dante advanced ruthlessly, clearing the staircase with brutal efficiency, his shotgun tearing through the remaining sentries with thunderous blasts. Within two minutes, the grand lobby was littered with spent shell casings, shattered marble, and downed operatives.

Ethan breached the heavy mahogany doors leading into the main auditorium.

The sight that greeted them was staggering.

The four-thousand-seat auditorium had been stripped of its velvet seats. In their place stood an array of quantum servers, cryogenic cooling conduits, and holographic telemetry arrays pulsing with blinding blue light.

At the center of the vast stage, suspended directly beneath the acoustic sounding board Caroline had designed, was an elevated dais constructed of black obsidian.

Standing atop the dais was Victoria Vance.

She wore an exquisite white silk evening gown, her silver hair styled with flawless aristocratic elegance, completely unfazed by the sounds of war echoing from the foyer. Standing beside her were six elite Sovereign Praetorians, armed with high-voltage directional carbines.

And beside Victoria, bound to a steel medical chair, sat Vanessa Sterling.

Vanessa’s face was bruised and gaunt, her glamorous veneer stripped away to reveal a shattered, broken woman. Her wrists were bolted to the armrests, wires running from her temples to the central mainframe.

"Vanessa?" Elena gasped from behind Ethan, her eyes widening in disbelief. "You told us she was imprisoned in the federal supermax!"

"The federal supermax belongs to me, little girl," Victoria Vance said, her voice carrying effortlessly across the acoustically perfect hall without the need for a microphone. She looked at Vanessa with total disgust. "My daughter was a disappointing operative. She let her petty, narcissistic emotions blind her to the mission. She wanted Ethan's heart; she wanted Caroline’s lifestyle. Such trivial, pathetic human desires."

Victoria then turned her cold, piercing gaze to Ethan and the unconscious child in his arms.

"Nikolai," Victoria breathed, a smile of terrifying reverence touching her lips. "The perfect vessel. The biological bridge between the old bloodlines of Europe and the technological dawn of the Sovereign era."

"Let the children go, Victoria," Ethan growled, stepping slowly down the center aisle, his boots crunching over shattered wood. "This ends between you and me."

"It does not end, Ethan. It synchronizes," Victoria said smoothly. She pressed a button on a small remote in her palm.

Instantly, a high-frequency acoustic pulse radiated from the stage.

Nikolai’s eyes snapped wide open. The child let out an ear-piercing scream of agony as the violet filaments on his face ignited into blinding white light. His body tore itself out of Ethan’s grip with superhuman force, suspended mid-air by the electromagnetic field generated from the dais!

"Niko!" Sophie screamed, trying to run toward the stage. Elena grabbed her, holding the thrashing little girl back with all her strength.