The VIP Landlord

Chapter 7 : Room 304

CHAPTER 7: ROOM 304

“Don’t breathe the gas, Colter!”

Ines’s voice sounded muffled under the hissing of the gas canister spinning across the concrete floor. Colter immediately pulled up his jacket collar to cover his nose and mouth, feeling his eyes burn and water from the chemical smoke. His vision was extremely limited, leaving only blurry silhouettes moving in front of the emergency stairwell.

The first attacker stepped through the smoke, the barrel of his assault rifle aimed straight ahead with a tactical flashlight cutting sharply through the darkness of the corridor. But before the armed man could pull the trigger, Ines’s black-coated silhouette moved with incredible speed from the dark hinge side of the door.

Ines grabbed the man’s right wrist, twisted it downward with a hard jerk that forced the rifle barrel toward the floor, then drove her tactical knife into the gap under his bulletproof vest, right in the armpit. The man let out a choked groan before collapsing face-down onto the concrete floor.

“There are three more behind him!” Linus shouted through the radio in Colter’s jacket pocket. “Colt! Someone in Room 304 just opened their back door! They’re trying to escape through the rear emergency stairs!”

Hearing Linus’s report, Colter immediately remembered their original objective before the attack. The intruder in Room 304 who had leaked the apartment’s location was preparing to escape and leave all of them to die at the hands of the outside faction. If that person got away, Colter would never know who was behind the destruction of his grandfather’s sanctuary.

“Ines, hold the corridor! I need to check Room 304!” Colter yelled as he crawled around the barricade table, trying to avoid the remaining white smoke rising to the ceiling.

“Don’t die in there, Landlord. This month’s rent isn’t paid yet,” Ines replied coldly, while her fingers picked up the dead attacker’s assault rifle and aimed it back at the stairwell door for the second attacker.

Colter ran down the rest of the third-floor corridor toward the west end of the building, where Room 304 was located. His steps felt heavy from the lingering burn in his eyes, but he pushed forward until he reached the wooden door marked 304.

Just like Linus said, the door was already slightly open, leaving a gap of about ten centimeters that revealed a pitch-black room inside. There was no sound of activity, but the faint smell of an expensive, distinct men’s cologne drifted from the doorway — a scent that felt very familiar to Colter.

Colter pushed the door open slowly with the tip of his shoe, making sure there were no tripwires or sticky bombs behind the wooden frame. Once the door was fully open, he stepped inside holding a small flashlight in his trembling left hand.

The flashlight swept across Room 304. Unlike Ines’s messy Room 301 or Harlan’s luxurious Room 303, this room looked clean and empty, as if no one had ever lived here. But on a wooden desk in the corner, a portable satellite signal transmitter about the size of a small suitcase was still on, its green indicator light blinking rapidly.

Next to the device, a large brown envelope with Mr. Henderson’s law firm logo lay on the desk, torn open at one end.

Colter stepped closer to the desk and aimed his flashlight at the transmitter’s screen. It showed a data transmission status confirming that all of the VIP tenants’ personal files from the apartment had finished uploading to an international dark web server exactly three minutes ago.

“You’re a few minutes too late to stop it, Colter.”

A calm baritone voice came from the darkness behind the bathroom door on Colter’s left. A second later, Colter’s flashlight caught the figure of a middle-aged man standing in a perfectly neat suit, holding a silenced pistol aimed directly at Colter’s chest.

The man wasn’t Mr. Henderson. It was Mr. Duncan Briggs — Mr. Henderson’s chief personal assistant, the same man who used to deliver the apartment’s monthly bookkeeping files to Colter’s grandfather’s house.

“Mr. Briggs?” Colter gasped, lowering the flashlight slightly so it wasn’t in the man’s eyes. “Why are you here? Why did you betray this place?”

“Betrayal is too harsh a word for business, Colter,” Duncan Briggs said, stepping forward two paces. The thin smile on his face looked ice cold under the flashlight’s dim glow. “Your grandfather built this place by gathering the richest fugitives in the world, draining their money for fake protection. Our law firm has kept this secret for twenty years, and now, with your grandfather dead, it’s time these assets were transferred to someone who actually values them.”

“So you deliberately lured the outside faction here to slaughter all of us, so you could take full ownership of this land deed?” Colter asked, stalling for time as he slowly shifted his right foot closer to the leg of the desk.

“Not just this land, Colter, but all of Harlan Montgomery’s secret bank account data and Linus Floyd’s encryption codes, which I just finished uploading to the black market,” Duncan Briggs replied, patting the small suitcase next to the transmitter with his left hand. “The outside faction will handle Ines Mercer, and the police will handle the rest. Your job tonight is done, Kid. Say goodbye to your grandfather’s inheritance.”

Duncan Briggs’s finger tightened on the pistol trigger. In this life-or-death moment, Colter had only one advantage left — the building’s architecture, which he knew from his grandfather’s secret notes.

Right under the desk in Room 304 was a manual emergency lever connected directly to the iron bar window locks for the entire third floor.

Colter kicked the wooden desk with all his strength, sending it toppling toward Duncan Briggs and throwing off the aim of his gun. A muffled gunshot rang out, hitting the concrete wall behind Colter, at the same time Colter dove to the floor to grab the emergency lever under the wall.