They destroyed my daughter’s face and laughed about it—until I made one phone call and the senator on the other end whispered, “I’ve been waiting twenty years for you.”

At 2:15 AM, Grand Central Terminal was a cavernous, echoing tomb of marble, shadows, and polished steel. The main concourse was deserted, save for a few transit workers polishing the brass rails and a pair of indifferent beat cops drinking coffee near the information booth.

Daniel walked past the grand staircases, wearing a dark wool coat with the collar turned up against the chill. He didn't use the public stairwells. Instead, he pried open an unmarked service door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY using a specialized titanium tension tool he had kept tucked inside the lining of his old belt since the nineties.

The door clicked open with barely a sound.

He slipped into the dim, industrial underworld of the terminal—a labyrinth of steam pipes, electrical junction boxes, concrete tunnels, and old baggage elevators that smelled of ozone, damp stone, and decades of forgotten history.

According to the terminal blueprints he had memorized years ago, Section C, Sub-Level 3 housed the legacy railway lockers—obsolete storage units dating back to the mid-twentieth century that were no longer listed on public maps.

As he navigated the maze of flickering fluorescent lights, a metallic scraping sound echoed down the corridor ahead of him.

Daniel froze, stepping into the deep shadow cast by a massive industrial ventilation unit. He rested his right hand inside his coat pocket, wrapping his fingers around the heavy steel handle of a compact collapsible baton.

Two men in dark tactical gear walked past his hiding spot, carrying heavy canvas duffel bags.

“Thorne wants the perimeter secure by three,” one muttered. “If the old man shows up, we don’t negotiate. We take him down and burn the locker.”

“And the girl?” the second asked.

“Already accounted for. Once the ledger’s in Thorne’s hands, the senator’s son and his little friends are going to take the fall for the whole operation. Clean break.”

The men rounded the corner, their heavy boots fading down the service tunnel.

Daniel stepped out from the shadows, his face carved from stone. They had a backup plan to frame Santiago, Maurice, and Emmett once they were done with them. But more importantly, they thought Renata was unprotected.

He picked up his pace.

At the end of the damp, concrete-walled corridor stood a bank of rusted iron lockers bearing faded numbers painted in chipped yellow paint.

Locker 214 sat right in the middle, secured by a heavy, modern digital keypad that hummed with a blue LED light—completely out of place among the vintage hardware.

Daniel approached the locker. He pulled the silver key from his pocket and stared at the digital pad. It wasn't a standard lock; it was a biometric-relay terminal tied to an encrypted network server.