“Remi, we don’t have all day,” Erick said, his voice sharp as he climbed the ladder ahead of her.
Rust flaked off the metal rungs, landing on her sleeve like dried blood.
She stared up at his silhouette, suddenly hesitant.
The ladder led to a manhole cover—just a circle of faint light filtering through the grates.
Up there wasn’t safety.
Up there was whatever game Erick was playing now.
“You’re not serious,” she said, gripping the cold metal.
“You’re telling me my father’s entire financial trail is gone?
That you erased proof of every bribe, every offshore account?”
Erick paused halfway up, glancing down at her.
The flashlight clipped to his belt cast eerie shadows across his face.
“We relocated?”
Ivan groaned behind them, pressing a hand to his bandaged side.
“Christ, boss, you gonna explain or are we playing Twenty Questions in a sewer?”
Erick’s boot scraped against the ladder’s last rung.
“Dominique’s wedding gift,” he said, voice dripping with irony.
“Remember the encrypted thumb drive I handed her?
Said it was sentimental crap—baby pictures, love letters.” He shoved the manhole cover aside with a metallic screech.
Daylight sliced through, dust motes swirling in the sudden glare.
“Turns out sentiment’s got teeth.”
Remi’s grip tightened.
The realization hit like a gut punch: Dominique had been carrying the Laurents’ financial autopsy in her purse this whole time.
“You planted it on her.”
Above them, Erick’s silhouette shrugged.
“Call it a contingency.
And thanks to Martin Clarke’s obsession with ‘protecting’ his precious wife?” A wet chuckle.
“That drive’s now locked in Dominique’s private safe at the penthouse.”
Remi’s breath hitched—half-laugh, half-disbelief.
“So Dominique’s guarding the one thing that could bury her?”
Erick hauled himself through the manhole, his jacket scraping against the iron rim.
“Poetic, isn’t it?” His voice floated down, gritty with satisfaction.
“Now move.
We’ve got six hours before Leroy’s accountants start panicking.”
The ladder groaned under Remi’s weight as she climbed.
Concrete dust and the sharp tang of rust coated her tongue.
When her head cleared the manhole, the light stung her eyes—not daylight, but the sickly yellow glow of a warehouse district at 3 AM.
Erick stood silhouetted against a chain-link fence, scanning the empty lot beyond.
Aria emerged next, coughing as she passed the hard drive up to Ivan.
“If we’re hitting the penthouse,” she muttered, “we’ll need a distraction.
GD security’s got thermal scopes and a shoot-first policy.”
Erick crouched by the fence, fingers tracing a loose chain link like he was reading Braille.
“Thermal scopes won’t matter if the building’s on fire,” he murmured.
Remi’s head snapped toward him.
“You’re joking.”
“Not even a little.” He flicked a glance at Aria, who was already pulling schematics up on a cracked tablet.
“GD’s got three floors of paper records in the west wing.
All those nice, flammable corruption receipts your father didn’t digitize.”
Ivan spat into the weeds.
“Boss, I love pyrotechnics, but torching GD HQ brings every cop in the city down on us.”
Erick’s fingers curled around the chain link until the metal groaned.
“Who said anything about torching it?” The flashlight flicked upward, illuminating a smirk that belonged to a man who’d already won.
Remi’s stomach twisted.
But what choice did she have now?
“Oh, fuck it!”
The chain-link fence clanked as Erick squeezed through the gap.
Remi followed close behind.
Her expensive shoes were now just lumps of mud and sewer gunk.
The warehouse lot stretched ahead—old forklifts left to rust, oil stains from decades ago, and the wreck of a delivery van with its doors torn off.
Aria crouched by a rusty dumpster.
Her tablet screen lit her face with a pale blue glow.
“GD’s fire system runs on a closed network,” she said, typing fast.
“But their backup generator has a manual switch.
Janitor’s closet, third floor, northeast corner.”
Erick didn’t smile.
He didn’t need to.
“How long?”
“Fifteen minutes to fake the alarms,” Aria said, finger poised over the screen.
“But once I start it, every GD guard gets a ‘fire drill’ text.
They’ll evacuate like it’s routine.” She looked up.
“You’ll have eight minutes max before they realize it’s fake.”
Remi’s breath fogged in the cold air as she stared at the glowing schematics on Aria’s tablet.
“Eight minutes?” she snapped.
“That’s not enough—”
“Enough for what?” Erick interrupted, already walking toward the warehouse’s back door.
“To hesitate?
To doubt?” His flashlight beam hit a crowbar jammed in the doorframe—left there like someone knew they’d return.
He ripped it free with a metallic screech.
“We’re not stealing, Remi.
We’re taking back what’s ours.”