Chapter 4 - The Shadows of St. Patrick's
The catacombs beneath St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral were cold, damp, and smelled of ancient stone and decaying oak.
At 11:30 PM, Dominic’s strike team bypassed the cathedral’s outdated security grid in less than ninety seconds. Gabriel and Silas took up defensive positions in the upper courtyard, while Dominic and I descended the narrow spiral stone staircase into the subterranean vaults.
Dominic wore a sleek black tactical suit, an automatic pistol holstered at his chest, carrying a high-powered flashlight. I wore a dark fitted jacket, my hair tied back, carrying my father’s old copper magnifying glass and my notebook.
We walked through narrow stone corridors lined with ancient burial crypts until we reached a massive iron door reinforced with three intricate, brass rotating dials.
The door was covered in engraved Cyrillic characters and Corsican mathematical symbols.
"This is it," I whispered, stepping up to the iron door. "The Vault of the Three Keys."
"We don't have the third physical key," Dominic pointed out, shining his light on the central lock mechanism. "Can you bypass it?"
"My father didn't leave me a physical key, Dominic," I realized suddenly, my mind flashing back to a strange memory from my twelfth birthday.
“Maya,” my father had said, sitting beside my bed, holding a worn silver necklace with a brass pendant engraved with numbers. “Memorize these twelve characters. Never write them down. Never tell a living soul. It is the poem of the lost scholar.”
I reached out, my fingers touching the cold brass dials on the iron door.
"The physical key was a decoy," I murmured, my heart pounding with electric excitement. "The real key was a phonetic sequence. My father made me memorize it when I was a child."
I began turning the first dial, aligning the Cyrillic characters according to the poem: V-A-N-G-U-A-R-D-1-5-8-4.
With every turn of the dial, heavy iron gears inside the door groaned and clicked!
CLICK. CLICK. CLACK.
The final dial locked into place.
For two seconds, nothing happened. Then, with a heavy, echoing THUD, the three-ton iron door slowly swung inward, revealing a small, dry stone chamber.
Sitting on a marble pedestal at the center of the room was an ancient, iron-bound book encased in a glass box. The Tsar’s Lexicon.
"You did it, Maya," Dominic breathed, stepping beside me, looking at the artifact with awe.
"Drop your weapons! Both of you!"
A sharp, cultured voice echoed from the dark spiral staircase behind us.
Dominic instantly stepped in front of me, shielding my body with his broad frame, his hand drawing his weapon in a flash!
Stepping out of the shadows was Gabriel—Dominic’s most trusted enforcer.
Beside Gabriel stood a tall, silver-haired man in an exquisite velvet coat, holding an ivory-handled cane.
Arthur Vance—the leader of the Vanguard.
"Gabriel..." Dominic said, his voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying register that made the ambient temperature of the catacombs drop ten degrees. "You sold out."
Gabriel didn't look ashamed. He raised his suppressed pistol, aiming it directly at Dominic’s head. "Vance offered me twenty percent of the global intelligence network once the Lexicon is secured, Don Russo. You were always too focused on controlling New York. The Vanguard controls the world."
Arthur Vance stepped forward, offering a thin, wicked smile that made my skin crawl.
"Dr. Linwood’s daughter," Vance murmured, looking past Dominic to stare at me. "I spent twenty years trying to break your father’s mind to get that cipher sequence. Who knew he passed it down to a pathetic little girl carrying water pitchers at The Sterling?"
"She isn't a little girl," Dominic growled, taking a slow, lethal step forward. "She’s the woman who just ended your life."
"Kill them both," Vance ordered coldly, turning his back to walk toward the pedestal.
Before Gabriel could squeeze the trigger, I acted!
I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out a high-intensity chemical flare I had snatched from Dominic’s tactical bag, struck the cap, and threw it straight into Gabriel’s face!
CRACK-BOOM!
A blinding, thousand-lumen crimson light exploded inside the narrow stone vault!
Gabriel shrieked, blinded, firing his weapon wildly into the ceiling!
Dominic didn't miss his chance. In a fraction of a second, he closed the distance, grabbed Gabriel’s gun arm, twisted it until the bone shattered, and slammed him hard against the stone wall, knocking him unconscious!
Vance gasped, spinning around, reaching for his ivory cane!
Dominic lunged forward, grabbing Vance by his throat, lifting the older man three feet off the ground and slamming him against the iron door of the vault!
"You broke her father," Dominic roared, his grey eyes flashing with demonic, unstoppable rage. "You made her life a nightmare! Now say her name before I break your neck!"
"M-Maya..." Vance choked out, his eyes bulging in terror as his heels kicked uselessly in the air. "Maya Linwood!"
Dominic let go. Vance collapsed onto the cold stone floor, weeping and gasping for air, as Silas and four loyal Russo enforcers rushed down the spiral stairs, securing the perimeter.
Dominic turned back to me. His tactical vest was rumpled, his breathing heavy, but his eyes were completely focused on my face.
He walked up to me, took my hands in his, and brought them to his lips.
May you like
"Are you hurt, my scholar?" he asked softly.
"No," I whispered, tears of pure relief finally spilling down my cheeks as I looked at the defeated man on the floor. "I'm free."
