The red emergency lights of The Obsidian pulsed like a dying star, casting long, distorted shadows across the glass-strewn floor. Julian stood by the reinforced entrance to the guest quarters, his face a roadmap of scars from the quarry explosion, his eyes burning with the fever of a man who had already accepted his own death. In his left hand, he gripped the collar of Silas Vance’s robe; in his right, the detonator that promised to turn the skyscraper into a pillar of fire.
"The ring, Lucian," Julian rasped, his voice whistling through his damaged throat. "The diamond. Give it to me, and I’ll let the old man crawl to the elevators. Refuse, and we all become dust."
I looked at my father. Silas Vance, the man who had built an empire on lies and turned his own daughter into a biological sa
