Halfway through, Charlie's voice crackles through my earpiece: "Something's wrong. The bride hasn't answered."
I stumble, catch myself against the wall.
"She's just standing there." Jenny reports. "Not speaking."
Good girl. Fight them, Vivianne. Give us time.
"The groom looks angry." Sam adds. "Father's moving toward her."
We reach the end of the corridor—the biometric door. State of the art, installed maybe five years ago. Fingerprint scanner, retinal scan, and a keypad for a twelve-digit code. Unbeatable under normal circumstances.
But we have Mitzy's special gift.
Merlin raises his wrist, where the EMP watch sits innocuously. "Once I trigger this, we have thirty seconds before the systems reboot. The door will be on manual locks only—we'll have to force it."
"Do it."
"Wait." He grabs my arm. "Listen."
Through the comms, chaos. Shouting. A crash.
"Flowers everywhere." Brett reports. "Someone knocked over the entire altar arrangement."
"Was it Charlie?"
"Negative, he's by the gift table. It just... fell."
A distraction. Someone's buying us time.
"Now." I tell Merlin.
He presses the watch face three times in sequence. No dramatic flash, no sound effect like in films. Just a subtle vibration, and every LED on the door goes dark.
Together, we grab the emergency manual handle—required by fire codes even in secret vaults—and pull. The door weighs at least 300 pounds and is designed to be opened by hydraulics, not human muscle. It fights us every inch.
"Ten seconds." Merlin gasps.
We pull harder. My shoulders scream. My hands slip on the metal.
"Five seconds."
With a grinding protest, the door swings open just as the lights flicker back on, systems rebooting. An alarm begins to shriek—piercing, overwhelming, designed to disorient as much as alert.
But we're in.
The vault spreads before us like a dragon's hoard. Paintings stack against the walls—a Monet, a Picasso, what might be a real Vermeer. Display cases hold jewelry that hasn't seen the light in decades. Ancient artifacts that belong in museums sit carelessly on shelves.
All stolen. All hidden. The Faulks family's real wealth, built on the bones of war and theft.
But we're here for only one thing.
"There." Merlin points.
A glass case, and within it, lying on black velvet like a drop of blood...
The Swan.
"Alarms are going off everywhere." CJ reports. "Security is scrambling. You need to move NOW."
