Ellie's POV
The darkness was a living thing. It pressed in on Ellie, thick and suffocating. She couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She could only hear the ragged sound of her own breathing, the pounding of her heart in her ears, and Nicholas's voice, a low, steady anchor in the void.
"Stay behind me."
His hand found her arm in the dark, his grip firm and sure. He pulled her gently but urgently from her chair. She stumbled, disoriented, but he guided her, his other hand feeling along the wall. They moved away from the table, away from the windows.
The distant, frantic banging from Marco's room had stopped. The only sound now was a faint, persistent buzzing coming from the direction of the front door. It was the sound of an electric drill. Someone was trying to cut through the hardened steel.
"They're at the door," she whispered, her voice trembling.
"That's the distraction," Nicholas whispered back, his mouth close to her ear. "Listen."
She strained her ears, trying to quiet the panic screaming in her mind. Beyond the buzzing, she heard it. A faint, metallic scrape-scrape-scrape. Not from the front. From the wall to their left. From the direction of the bedrooms. From her bedroom.
"There's… scratching," she breathed.
He went perfectly still. She felt him turn his head, listening. He placed his palm flat against the wall she indicated. A low curse escaped his lips, swallowed by the dark. "The service panel for the central air. It's in that wall. It leads to the building's main utility shaft."
The buzzing at the front door was a show. The real breach was happening right now, inside the walls of the penthouse.
A new sound erupted: a loud, metallic BANG and the screech of tearing metal, followed by Marco's fierce, clear shout. "Clear! I'm out!"
Nicholas moved instantly. He pulled Ellie along the wall, found a seam she'd never noticed, and pressed. A hidden door hissed open, revealing a smaller, darker space. A safe room.
"In. Now."
She scrambled inside onto a cold, padded bench. He followed, pulling the door shut. It sealed with an airtight swoosh, plunging them into a silence so complete it rang in her ears. A moment later, a soft, green LED light flickered on in the ceiling, casting a dim, ghostly glow.
The room was a closet, barely big enough for the two of them. Nicholas sat opposite her, his back against the wall, a compact black gun now visible in his hand. He wasn't pointing it; he was just holding it, ready. His head was tilted, listening to the world beyond the thick door.
They could still hear the muffled buzzing of the drill. And now, clearer, the scraping from the other side of the wall became a rhythmic, hollow banging.
"They're in the shaft," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "They're coming up through the panel in your room."
Ellie hugged her knees to her chest, trying to make herself small. "What now?"
"Now we wait for Marco."
The banging grew more frantic. It sounded like someone was kicking the metal panel from the other side. BANG. BANG. BANG. Each impact vibrated through the wall at her back.
Suddenly, a new sound—a crash of splintering wood and a shout of pain from the hallway. Then Marco's voice, right outside the safe room door. "Boss! The front door is holding, but they're through the panel in the girl's room! I have one contained in the hall, but there's at least one more in the shaft!"
Nicholas's face was a mask of grim decision in the green light. He slapped the door release. It hissed open. "Get her to the secondary location. Now," he ordered Marco, nodding at Ellie. He turned toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms, raising his weapon.
"No!" The word tore from Ellie before she could think. The idea of him walking alone toward that banging, toward the men coming out of the walls, was suddenly, unbearably worse than her own fear. "You can't go alone!"
He glanced back at her, and in the dim light from the safe room, she saw not the boss, but the man from dinner, the one with the father who loved to bake bread. "Go," he said, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it.
Marco didn't hesitate. He grabbed Ellie's arm and pulled her toward the mangled front door, its locking mechanism now a twisted wreck of metal. As they passed the kitchen island, Ellie's eyes landed on the block of chef's knives.
Her body moved without a plan. Survival wasn't just about running. Sometimes it was about having something sharp in your hand.
She wrenched her arm from Marco's grip, lunged, and yanked the largest chef's knife from the block. Its heavy, sharp weight was familiar and solid. It felt like power.
"What are you doing?" Marco growled, reaching for her.
"I'm not just something to be moved!" she snarled, the fury giving her strength. Before he could stop her, she turned and ran back down the hallway toward the bedrooms, toward the banging, toward Nicholas.
She rounded the corner into the dim hallway. Nicholas was facing the wall of her bedroom, where the air intake panel was now visibly shaking, bulging inward. He heard her footsteps and spun, his eyes widening in a mix of anger and sheer disbelief. "Ellie, NO!"
With a final, deafening CRASH, the metal panel burst inward. A man clad head-to-toe in black tactical gear started to climb through the jagged hole into the bedroom. He was focused on Nicholas, raising a stubby, black weapon. Ellie didn't think. The fear and rage crystallized into a single, clear point. She screamed, a raw sound that ripped from her throat, and launched herself forward, the gleaming chef's knife held high in both hands.