Chapter 5 - The Roof at Midnight
Up on the forty-fifth-floor roof helipad, the wind was howling off Lake Michigan, whipping freezing rain across the open concrete expanse.
Elena Vance stumbled toward the edge of the helipad, coughing and clutching her silk blouse against the bitter cold. Her hair was completely unraveled, whipping wildly across her face. She reached into her coat pocket, pulling out a satellite phone to punch the final execution code for the off-site server purge.
Before her thumb could hit the send button, heavy footsteps crunched against the wet gravel behind her.
“It’s over, Elena,” Dominic’s voice cut through the wind like a razor.
Elena spun around, pressing her back against the chain-link perimeter fence. Dominic stood ten feet away, his suit jacket soaked through with rain, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. He looked like an apparition of pure vengeance.
“You’re too late, Dominic!” Elena screamed over the roar of the wind, holding up the satellite phone. “The purge signal is queued! One second, and your entire empire turns to dust!”
“You built a brilliant trap,” Dominic said, taking a slow, measured step toward her. “You used Arthur Sterling as a shield, you manipulated the compliance logs, and you almost walked away with forty million dollars and my corporate soul.”
“And I would have gotten away with it,” Elena sneered, her eyes wide with manic adrenaline, “if it weren’t for a girl with a mop who didn’t know how to mind her own business!”
“She’s not just a girl with a mop,” Dominic said softly, closing the final distance between them.
Before Elena could press the button, Dominic moved with explosive, lightning-fast violence. He batted the satellite phone out of her hand, sending it spinning over the edge of the roof into the dark abyss of Michigan Avenue five hundred feet below.
Elena gasped, lashing out with her fingernails, but Dominic caught her wrists with one hand, pinning her against the fence with effortless, crushing strength.
“You’re going to spend the rest of your natural life in a maximum-security federal penitentiary,” Dominic whispered into her ear, his voice lower and more terrifying than any threat she had ever imagined. “And every single day you sit in that cell, you’re going to remember that you were outsmarted by a twenty-eight-year-old night janitor.”
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As Cole and two security guards finally burst through the roof access door with flashlights drawn, Dominic stepped back, wiping the rain from his face.
“Take her away,” he commanded.
