Chapter 9 - THE EXTRACTION PROTOCOL
The moment Julian turned his back to walk toward the executive conference room at the far end of the floor, Nicholas pulled Clare back two more steps into the deep shadows of the living area.
He released his hand from her mouth, his eyes glowing with an intense, terrifying focus in the dim room.
"Listen to me very carefully," Nicholas whispered, his lips almost touching her ear. "The tablet in your hands... does it have an active asset-tracker tag on the battery pack?"
Clare’s fingers trembled violently against the cracked rubber casing of the device. "Yes... yes, all the staff tablets have GPS and RFID tracking chips synced to the main security console in the basement."
Nicholas swore softly under his breath—a dark, Italian curse that rolled off his tongue like venom.
He reached down, took the tablet from her hands, and carried it across the room to the linear gas fireplace. Without hesitation, he grabbed a heavy iron poker from the hearth set, smashed the tablet's casing with two swift, muffled blows, and used the tip of the iron tool to pry the silver lithium battery away from the circuit board, tossing the destroyed electronics behind the fire-glass partition.
He walked back to Clare, his unbuttoned white shirt floating behind his muscular shoulders.
"The suite has a private service dumbwaiter behind the kitchen pantry," Nicholas said, his voice flat, steady, and commanding. "It drops directly into the cold-storage linen tunnels beneath the hotel's laundry facility. It hasn't been logged on the architectural blueprints since the nineteen-eighties."
Clare looked up at him, her chest heaving. "What about you? What are they doing here?"
Nicholas looked down at the black pistol in his hand, a cold, bitter smile touching the corner of his lips.
"Julian thinks he's meeting an international broker to sell off the remaining shipping manifests of our father's estate," Nicholas said softly, his slate-gray eyes turning to pure flint. "He doesn't know that I’m the one who bought them back."
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He reached out his broad hand, his warm, calloused fingers gently cupping the side of her pale jaw. For a brief, startling second, the lethal predator vanished, replaced by a man carrying the unbearable weight of an entire family's sins.
"You stumbled into the middle of a war, Clare Bennett," Nicholas whispered, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheek. "Now get into that dumbwaiter and get out of this building before the shooting starts."
