A sharp vibration against her palm dragged Halina awake. The unmarked burner phone Piotr Kasprzak had provided rarely signaled. Its screen showed an encrypted string: `Vektran board. Emergency vote. Noon. Serafima pushing. Stop it.` Halina pushed herself off the rumpled sheets, the damp chill of the country retreat biting through the heavy linen. Noon. That was barely four hours away. Serafima wasn't just playing for Damyan's conviction; she was moving to decapitate him from his own empire. This wasn't a frame job, it was a corporate coup, and the pieces were shifting faster than Halina had anticipated. She dressed quickly, choosing practical, dark clothing – a tailored jumpsuit and low, sturdy boots. No time for the elegant, deceptive facade today. Downstairs, the vast kitchen hummed with the quiet efficiency of staff preparing a breakfast Damyan wouldn't touch. She found him in the study, exactly where she’d left him hours earlier, the scent of stale coffee and desperation thick in the air. He was staring at the unlit fireplace, a man adrift. “The board is meeting at noon,” Halina announced, her voice cutting through the stillness like a honed blade. He didn’t flinch, didn’t turn. “So I gathered.” His voice was flat, devoid of its usual caustic edge. “Serafima has been preparing for this. She’ll declare me mentally unfit, a liability. A murderer.” “Kasprzak sent a warning. She moved the timeline up. They’re voting to strip your shares.” Halina stepped into his line of sight. “We need to stop it.” “How?” A dry, mirthless laugh escaped him. “I’m under house arrest. There are two patrols outside the main gates and another roving the perimeter. The entire estate is a gilded cage.” “Marek’s hideout in the city. The workspace he kept off the conglomerate's registry. Does it have anything that could discredit Serafima? Or clear you before this vote?” Damyan looked toward the darkened glass. “He kept his own counsel. It’s possible. He maintained a secure drive cluster there. Only he had the key phrase.” “And you know his patterns.” Halina held his stare. “It’s our only play. We pull you out. We reach that room. We pull what we need.” “Run?” Damyan straightened, dry cynicism returning to his tone. “You’re suggesting we breach house arrest and bolt like common felons?” “You’re facing life in prison and the loss of your inheritance. I’m facing a broken record and Kasprzak’s retribution. Consider it a shared venture.” Halina turned for the hall. “We need wheels. And a distraction.” Twenty minutes later, the outer iron gates groaned open for a scheduled catering van. Halina, disguised under a delivery uniform and a wide-brimmed cap, drove the unmarked utility vehicle, Damyan hunched low in the passenger seat, covered by a stack of empty crates. The estate security guard, a burly man named Klyment, waved them through with a perfunctory nod. Halina kept both palms steady on the plastic rim of the wheel. Just as the van cleared the apron and picked up speed on the tarmac, a black sedan lunged from an access lane, angling across their front bumper. Behind them, another vehicle, a heavy-duty SUV, screeched to a halt, boxing them in. Klyment, the guard, was now jogging towards them, a hand gesturing frantically. “Serafima’s loyalists,” Damyan gritted out, scrambling to sit upright. “She must have a standing order.” Halina dropped the pedal to the floorboards and wrenched the wheel, clipping the sedan’s front quarter-panel. A shower of sparks erupted. The black sedan spun, its driver fighting for control, giving Halina a narrow gap. She gunned the engine, the van lurching forward, leaving a trail of screeching tires and surprised shouts. “Hold on,” she instructed, her voice low and steady, a predator scenting prey. Radecz’s morning traffic was a chaotic labyrinth. Halina weaved through it with ruthless efficiency, cutting off a lumbering trolleybus, narrowly missing a hawker’s cart, the city blurring past them in a gritty montage of concrete and exhaust fumes. The SUV, a sleek, powerful machine, was relentless, its headlights flashing in their rearview mirror, gaining ground. “They’re closing,” Damyan said, bracing against the dashboard. Metal shrieked as their bumper took a strike. “She wants us hemmed in, or broken.” Halina took a hairpin turn onto an unpaved alleyway, sending garbage bins clattering. The SUV, too large for the narrow passage, slowed, forced to maneuver. This was her chance. She burst out onto a busy market street, blending into the organized chaos of vendors and pedestrians. For a moment, they were just another anonymous vehicle in the bustling city. “Where is this room?” she demanded, shifting hard down into third. Damyan pointed through the scratched windshield. “Three blocks north. The old Ostrovsky block. Fourth floor. Back entrance.” They ditched the smoking chassis in a tiered concrete deck, cutting through service corridors until they reached the brutalist concrete facade. A reinforced service door sat flush with the brickwork. Damyan produced a notched keycard. Inside, dust coated the dead air. Marek’s room was spartan: an unvarnished desk, metal shelving, and a freestanding processor cabinet humming against the plaster. Halina moved with purpose, scanning the room. “Where is it? The data?” Damyan tapped into the terminal console. “He kept duplicate partitions. Everything routed through these drives.” He paused, a frown deepening on his face. “Wait. There are files here I don’t recognize. Not Marek’s usual project codes.” Halina joined him, peering over his shoulder. He pulled up a series of ledger entries, shell company registrations, and encrypted transfers. The names were unfamiliar, but the scale of the transactions was staggering. Billions of Zlota, siphoned off over years, funneled into a network of phantom corporations. “What is this?” Damyan leaned closer to the monitor. “This isn’t Marek’s signature. It's systemic theft. These shell fronts—‘Veridian Acquisitions,’ ‘Aethelburg Holdings’—they’ve been siphoning industrial patents and capital reserves.” Halina skimmed the routed accounts. The timestamped leaks, the rushed shareholder summons, the forged custody chain—it formed a straight line. Serafima wasn’t merely removing an heir; she was gutting the firm from inside. “She built an entire parallel syndicate,” Halina said, noting the routing numbers. “Bleeding capital for eighteen months, ready to fold the remnants into her pocket once Marek died and you took the cell.” A high chirp cut through the terminal fan. A tripped tripwire. From the concrete canyons three stories down, sirens began to climb.

Crossfire Protocol