Nobody could see where William stood, and nobody could calculate where the next bullet would strike. The elite power-brokers of New York all clawed to the dark floorboards in a desperate search for cover.Then, a single, blinding theatrical spotlight snapped back on with a sharp, electric hiss. It cut a brilliant cylinder of white light straight through the thick blue haze of tobacco smoke. The beam illuminated the exact center of the main stage platform, pinning Serena Hargrove where she stood. The unassailable Ice Queen was completely frozen in terror against the wooden podium.Her face was ashen white under the glaring illumination. Her hands were still locked onto the edges of the structure with a rigid, desperate grip—the only thing preventing her knees from buckling beneath her.The emerald silk gown she wore shimmered under the direct light, casting fractured green reflections across the stage while she stared blindly into the surrounding darkness of the hall, her chest heaving

The freezing rain drummed a hollow, relentless rhythm against the dark asphalt of the Tribeca sidewalk.There, piled carelessly on the wet, oil-slicked curb, sat a massive mountain of heavy black trash bags. They contained Serena Hargrove’s entire designer wardrobe. Millions of dollars in premium French silk dresses, custom Italian leather boots, and exclusive runway coats were treated like common garbage.The freezing water soaked straight through the plastic layers, completely ruining the fragile fabrics that had once defined her absolute dominance over the entire city.Serena sat completely alone. She was sitting on the edge of a big, expensive imported leather suitcase that was already thoroughly soaked.Her premium makeup has already ruined her face. Dark streaks of mascara ran down her pale, sweating cheeks. She just stared blankly through the grey mist at the locked glass entry doors of her former penthouse complex.Behind the reinforced glass stood the building's security staf

The rain-slicked container yard of the Red Hook shipping terminal was dead quiet except for the low hum of the high-voltage security fences. The endless rainfall washed over the towering, rust-streaked walls of the metal cargo crates, creating a cold, gray labyrinth that stretched all the way down to the black edge of the harbor lanes.Every municipal lamppost along the industrial pier had been blacked out.Six of Viktor Volkov's heavily armed Russian mercenaries entered the massive metal cargo crates. They moved in a military formation, their heavy boots making zero sound against the wet asphalt floorboards.Leading the team from a van parked outside the terminal’s north perimeter checkpoint lane was Julian Vance. His pale, sweating face was illuminated only by the harsh blue glare of a laptop screen, his fingers twitching nervously as he tracked the live feeds of the hijacked security cameras across the grid.He looked completely unhinged, his clothes crumpled, his chest heaving wit

The morning financial broadcasts blared alert banners so intensely that they sliced through Manhattan. By seven o’clock, the news was everywhere: the thwarted terrorist attack at the Red Hook shipping port terminal and the stunning federal arrest of Julian Vance. Every television screen, ticker feed, and digital platform across New York City was dominated by this story.The headlines screamed about a massive, midnight industrial sabotage ring—one that had been expertly intercepted by an unknown, heavily armored private security force just in time to prevent catastrophic damage to critical infrastructure. Financial anchors spoke in panicked bursts, their voices racing as they relayed the total collapse of the Vance family’s market standing. Their shares were being hastily delisted from trading floors amidst an atmosphere of unrelenting regulatory chaos and fear.Up high, within the walls of an ultra-secure and huge penthouse suite perched above the streets of uptown Manhattan, Lady Elen

Down inside the chalet's heavily reinforced concrete basement room in Geneva, Switzerland, an elderly man with pristine silver hair, Pierre Du Pont, was tied firmly and brutally to a heavy wooden chair. His wool tailored suit was badly torn across the shoulders and chest, his breathing coming in shallow gasps as a thin line of fresh dark blood welled from his hairline down to his white collar, staining the white shirt.Pierre was one of Robert Cole's oldest, most loyal shadow trustees, a man who held the master cryptographic authorization keys required to validate the six-hundred-million-dollar international fund transfers of Apex Holdings. Despite the immense trauma of his sudden abduction hours earlier, he refused to give in or bend to their demands.Standing directly over him was Klaus, a brutal, heavy-set Swiss mercenary leader who ran the local contract cell known as the Alpine Fangs.Klaus was casually, sadistically playing with a glowing, red-hot branding iron right near a roar