"I have a date tomorrow night." Gabriel Castellan went perfectly still.

Vera’s eyes darted across the control panel in the safe room.

On monitor seven, showing the internal hallway of the east wing, a man in a wet leather jacket was moving silently past the laundry room. He had a suppressed pistol in his right hand and a portable electronic bypass unit plugged directly into the wall panel.

He wasn't guessing codes. He was using a master override key.

Vera recognized the leather jacket.

It belonged to Marco—Gabriel’s former head of house maintenance, who had been fired three weeks ago for gambling debts.

He’s going for the main server room, Vera realized, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird. If he bypasses the security grid from the inside, the armored shutters on the front windows will open.

Gabriel and his men were out on the lawn, pinned down by the primary assault team at the gate. If the house shutters opened, they would be flanked from behind.

Vera looked at the heavy steel door of the safe room.

Dante had told her to stay put. He had told her it was sealed.

She looked back at the monitor. Marco was already reaching the door to the primary grid control room, plugging his bypass key into the lock.

"No," Vera whispered.

She rushed to the control panel beside the steel door, hit the emergency manual release, and pulled the heavy door open.

The hallway outside was pitch black, illuminated only by the pulsing red emergency lights along the baseboards. The distant sound of muffled gunfire vibrated through the floorboards beneath her feet.

Vera slipped out into the dark hallway.

She knew this house better than anyone. She had scrubbed every inch of its marble, swept every corner, memorized every squeaky floorboard in the east wing. She knew which oak step creaked on the second-floor landing and which service door had an ungreased hinge.

She slipped down the rear servant stairs, moving like a shadow.

She reached the main utility corridor just as Marco finished overriding the grid panel. A green light flashed on the digital lock, and the heavy electronic shutters across the entire estate began to groan as they prepared to retract.

"Come on... open up, you rich bastard," Marco muttered under his breath, raising his gun toward the door handle.

Vera didn't hesitate.

She reached into the janitor's alcove beside her, grabbed a heavy, three-gallon commercial jug of concentrated industrial floor bleach, unscrewed the cap, and lunged out of the darkness.

"Marco!" she screamed.

Marco swung around, raising his gun, but before he could squeeze the trigger, Vera splashed the entire gallon of concentrated bleach straight into his face and eyes.

Marco let out a blood-curdling scream of pure agony, dropping his gun as he clutched his burning, blinding eyes, stumbling backward against the metal wall.

Vera didn't stop. She grabbed a heavy steel mop handle from the bucket and swung it with all the strength in her body, slamming it directly into the side of Marco’s head.

The wood cracked. Marco went limp and collapsed onto the concrete floor, unconscious.

Vera scrambled across the floor, grabbed the electronic bypass key plugged into the wall, and yanked it out.

The groaning shutters stopped moving. The red lock flashed back on. The fortress remained sealed.

Vera collapsed against the wall, hyperventilating, holding the cracked wooden mop handle to her chest, her dress splattered with bleach and rainwater.

The service door at the end of the hall suddenly blew off its hinges with a deafening bang.

A tall, broad figure burst through the smoke, a smoking firearm in hand, his face splattered with blood and soot.

Gabriel.

He stopped dead in his tracks, his gray eyes sweeping across the scene—the unconscious infiltrator on the floor, the spilled bleach, the pulled override key, and Vera sitting in the corner, shaking violently.