THE VAULT
Days Later
The downtown club, The Vault, pulsed with a predatory life all its own.
Music thudded through reinforced walls thick enough to muffle screams, bass notes reverberating in ribcages like second heartbeats. Neon lights sliced through the haze of expensive smoke—violet, crimson, electric blue—painting faces in garish colors that made everyone look either dangerous or desperate. Sometimes both.
Eli stood on the private mezzanine overlooking the main floor, her recently healed arm hidden beneath the sleeve of a tailored charcoal jacket that fit like armor. The fabric was expensive, chosen by Althea's stylist, cut to convey authority without ostentation. She didn't drink from the crystal tumbler at her elbow. She didn't smile at the sycophants who caught her eye from below.
But tonight—uncomfortable as she was in this role, uncertain as she felt wearing her sister's crown—she stepped forward.
She had to.
The Vale name demanded it. The fragile peace Althea had brokered demanded it. And somewhere deep in her chest, beneath layers of resentment and reluctant duty, Eli's own pride demanded it.
She would not be a pretty figurehead. She would not be dismissed.
"West table is Vasquez-adjacent," Albert murmured beside her, his voice barely audible over the music. Decades of loyal service had carved lines into his weathered face, but his eyes remained sharp as flint. He was the only person in this building—possibly the only person in the city—that Eli trusted at her back without reservation. "Three associates, one unknown. South entrance has new staff rotation. They're nervous, watching you."
Eli exhaled slowly, deliberately, the way she'd watched Althea do a hundred times in tense negotiations. Control the breath, control the body, control the room. It was a lesson her sister had learned from their father, passed down like an heirloom made of ice.
"Rotate security every thirty minutes," she instructed, her voice pitched low enough that only Albert could hear. "No patterns. No predictability. I want different faces on every door, every shift. If someone's planning to move against us, I won't make it easy by being consistent."
Albert nodded once, sharp and efficient. "And the weapons shipment from the Brooklyn pipeline?"
"Hold it." Eli's tone left no room for negotiation. "No movement until I verify the buyers myself. I'm not signing off on a deal that could blow back on us. The last thing we need is military-grade hardware ending up in the wrong hands and tracked back to The Vault."
Albert hesitated. "Your father had plans to move it tonight. The buyers are expecting—"
"Then they'll wait," Eli interrupted firmly. "Tell them there's been a delay in verification. Twenty-four hours, minimum. I won't rush a weapons transaction just to keep a schedule. Not on my watch."
"Understood." Albert melted back into the shadows near the exit, already pulling out his phone to relay orders.
Below them, the club writhed with expensive suits and glittering dresses, with the quiet desperation of people trying to matter in a city that devoured the insignificant. Deals were being made in shadowed booths. Alliances were being forged over bottles that cost more than most people's monthly rent. Fortunes changed hands with handshakes and knowing glances.
This was the heart of Vale City's underworld, beating with currency and violence in equal measure.
By midnight, word had already traveled through the shadows like wildfire through dry brush:
Eli Vale was not a figurehead.
She was not her father's spare daughter, brought in to warm a seat.
She was a warden. Cold. Exacting. Unforgiving.
Eli made one pass across the main floor. Slow. Intentional. Each step measured.
Her presence cooled the air around her like winter settling over summer gardens. Conversations quieted as she passed. Glances followed her movement, some calculating, some fearful, all respectful. She wasn't Althea's magnetic charisma of power that drew people close like moths to flame. She wasn't Roman's practiced perfection that made people believe in impossible things.
She was a blade—cold, sharp, and perfectly balanced.
Eli stopped at the high-stakes poker table near the eastern wall, where a young dealer was finishing a transaction with one of the regular players. The cash was being counted, chips exchanged, ledger entries made. Everything looked smooth, professional, routine.
But something was off.
Before the dealer even looked up, Eli saw it—the subtle discrepancy between the ledger numbers and the actual stack of cash on the velvet table surface. A small gap. Not large enough to be obvious, just enough to be profitable if repeated over weeks, months. A test, perhaps, to see if the new management was paying attention.
A mistake.
"Hold," Eli said softly, the single word cutting through the ambient noise like a knife.
The dealer looked up, his grin too polished, too practiced to be genuine. He was young, mid-twenties, probably thought he was clever. Probably thought the boss's little sister wouldn't notice a skim on her first real night running the floor.
"Problem, Ms. Vale?" His tone was respectful enough, but there was a hint of challenge underneath, the kind that said he didn't quite believe she had the spine to call him out.
Eli stepped into his personal space, close enough that he had to tilt his head back slightly to maintain eye contact. Her sapphire gaze hardened to something sharp enough to cut glass.
"You're short."
"Count again," he laughed, but the sound was nervous now, uncertain. "I'm sure it's—"
She didn't count again.
She didn't need to.
Instead, she slid the tablet computer across the velvet, her finger highlighting the red-lined discrepancies in the digital logs. Every transaction was recorded, every dollar accounted for, every movement tracked. Her father had built this system. Althea had refined it. And Eli had spent the last three days memorizing every protocol, every safeguard, every way someone might try to cheat it.
"You skimmed two thousand before it touched the table. You thought I wouldn't notice on my first night actually running things. You thought I was here for decoration."
The dealer's smile faltered, cracking like poorly applied paint. "It was a mistake. I can fix it right now—I can—"
"I don't make accusations without evidence," Eli murmured, her voice soft enough to make him lean in to hear it, soft enough to hurt. "And I don't make threats. I make corrections."
The tension in the surrounding area snapped taut as a wire. Other patrons had noticed the confrontation now, conversations dying mid-sentence, all eyes turning toward the tableau.
"You'll repay the two thousand," Eli continued, her tone never rising above conversational. "Plus ten percent for wasting my time and insulting my intelligence."
Relief washed over the dealer's face like a tide, his shoulders sagging. "Of course—absolutely—thank you, Ms. Vale, I—"
"And you'll never work in this city again."
The relief froze, transformed into something colder.
"What?"
"You heard me." Eli straightened, putting distance between them, making it clear the negotiation was over. "Walk out. Hands visible. Security will escort you to collect your personal effects. You have ten minutes to be out of my building and twenty-four hours to be out of Vale City. If I see your face after that, or if I hear you're working for any of our competitors…"
She let the sentence hang, unfinished. The imagination was always worse than the reality.
"Walk."
Security materialized from the shadows—two large men who made the dealer look like a child. He opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and walked. Hands visible, just as ordered.
No shouting. No blood. No spectacle.
Just a career erased in the time it took for the DJ to transition to the next bass drop.
From the private mezzanine above, Althea watched with a tightening in her chest that wasn't quite fear.
Pride and something more complicated—perhaps relief, perhaps concern—warred in Althea's expression. Eli was adapting faster than anyone had expected. The question was whether she was adapting into something the family could control, or something else entirely.