Chapter 6 - The Iron Carriage
The heavy leather doors of the sedan slammed shut just as two armed men burst out of the kitchen exit, their silenced pistols raised.
"GO! GO NOW, THOMAS!" Arthur shouted to his driver.
The black sedan’s engine roared to life, the rear tires spinning on the wet cobblestones before gripping the road and launching the vehicle forward into the street traffic. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the reinforced bulletproof rear glass, leaving small, spider-webbed impact marks.
Leo collapsed back against the soft leather seat, his heart hammering against his ribs as he pulled a terrified, trembling Maya against his lap.
"Who are those men?" Leo demanded, his breath fogging up the tinted side window.
Arthur leaned back, his eyes dark with a mixture of rage and grief. "They belong to the Syndicate—a shadow firm known as the Vane Estate. Thirty years ago, your grandfather—my late business partner—developed an algorithm capable of unlocking every encrypted financial registry in the Western Hemisphere. They called it the Rosewood Cipher."
"My mother had it?" Leo asked.
"No," Arthur said softly, turning his gaze toward the boy. "The cipher wasn't written on a drive, Leo. It was encoded into the non-coding DNA sequence of your mother's lineage. Julianna didn't carry a key. She was the key. And now that they have her, they only need one more piece to activate the sequence."
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Arthur looked down at Maya, who had fallen quiet, her blue eyes wide with innocent confusion.
"They need the secondary strand," Arthur whispered. "They need your sister."
