Victoria
The adrenaline coursing through me makes my mouth taste like metal.
I breathe it in as I descend the final flight of concrete steps beneath my uncle’s compound, the hum of the generators vibrating through the soles of my boots. The air grows colder down here, dense with recycled oxygen and old secrets. Ten feet ahead, the biometric lock on the vault door glows soft blue, calm in its confidence that no one can bypass it.
My heartbeat is a steady, ruthless rhythm. I’ve trained it that way. Months of planning. Weeks of rewiring old surveillance boards I stole from the estate’s storage warehouse. Three nights in a row I’ve crawled through ductwork like a feral cat to map the internal structure. A lifetime of pretending I was obedient enough never to dream of freedom.
I didn’t wake up one day knowing how to do this. I learned in fragments. Small, forbidden rebellions tucked into glittering nights my uncle paraded me through. Charity galas. Bratva celebrations. Rooms full of drunk men who never noticed their watches gone, their wallets lightened, their cufflinks missing. A sleight of hand here, a disappearing bracelet there. Nothing big enough to spark suspicion, just enough to train my reflexes, my timing, my ability to slip through a crowd like smoke.
They thought I was quiet, obedient and harmless. They never realised I was practicing. Preparing. Turning every party into a classroom, every careless person into a lesson. Tonight is simply the final exam, and I’m twenty-three minutes from stepping outside his reach and disappearing forever.
That, or he will have me killed. So it’s win-win, I suppose.
The vault corridor stretches ahead like a throat waiting to swallow me. The cameras above me blink, unaware that the loop I uploaded at eleven-fifty-nine is replaying the empty hallway on a ninety-second rotation. The guards upstairs are distracted by a drunk brawl in the kitchen that I instigated before ducking out into the night while no one was watching. My uncle thinks I’m in my room.
I touch the small metal device on my inner wrist, a sensor hijacker disguised inside a cheap smartwatch casing. It pulses once against my skin. The signal is live.
Time to move.
I press my thumb to the biometric panel. The door clicks, hesitates, then unlocks with a sigh that sounds almost disappointed. For years, this vault has only ever opened for my uncle. Tonight, it opens for me. An enemy under his own roof. An enemy who shares his blood.
The scent of cold stone and polished steel rolls over me as the door swings wide. Rows of deposit boxes line the walls, but I step past them. I’m not here for cash or guns or blackmail. I’m here for the case on the central pedestal. Reinforced titanium, fingerprint-coded, hidden behind a secondary shield I cracked two weeks ago.
Inside: diamonds worth enough to buy my freedom ten times over.
There are a thousand things in this vault that I could take that would be more than enough to get me out. But these diamonds aren’t just money, they’re leverage, because I know who my uncle stole them from.
I cross the chamber and unlock the pedestal’s control panel. My fingers move fast, precise. I’ve been rehearsing this in my mind for months, every angle, every screw, every possible way this could go wrong.
But so far… perfect.
The shield retracts with a low mechanical hum. I slip the titanium case into my backpack, tightening the straps until the weight hugs my spine. It’s heavier than I expected. Or maybe it’s the adrenaline making my knees float.
“Goodbye,” I whisper to the room, the word barely a breath.
Goodbye to the girl who lost her parents so young that she can only remember them in fragments and stories told by others. Goodbye to the girl raised to be obedient by a tyrant. Goodbye to the cage built from fear and logic and threats. Goodbye to the uncle who always smiled when he punished me, who told me I was lucky to be part of his family.
Lucky.
My hands curl into fists.
I turn for the exit, and that’s when the alarm screams.
A raw, high-pitched shriek tears through the vault, slashing through the air like serrated metal. My pulse detonates. My mind instantly races through every safeguard I set, every reset, every contingency.
No. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The loop was clean. The triggers were bypassed.
Someone knew.
Someone anticipated me.
I bolt down the corridor, boots hitting the floor in rapid, echoing bursts. Red lights flare overhead, painting everything in strobe-lit violence. I catch the distant thud of guards pounding down the upper stairwell.
I don’t panic.
I don’t freeze.
This is the part I always counted on, that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. My backup exit is already prepped. Forty feet ahead, a narrow maintenance hatch sits half-concealed behind a shadowed pipe system. I sprint toward it, drop to my knees, wrench the panel open, and slide inside.
