Chapter 1: The Palais de Justice Restoration Vault
EVA
"Your ink-stained fingers are only fit for scrubbing varnish in the cellar, Evangeline!" my treacherous ex-fiancé Julian Thorne-Vane sneered through the reinforced iron observation grate of the subterranean restoration vault, turning the heavy brass deadbolt from the outside while my vain stepsister Clarissa and greedy stepmother Madame Odette Mercier laughed behind the bulletproof glass. "Did you really think my uncle, Arch-Chancellor Alistair Thorne-Vane, would let Geneviève Mercier's bastard orphan sit in the Grand Chancellery chair at tonight's Louvre Imperial Auction?"
I stood in the center of the freezing, subterranean Palais de Justice Heraldic & Fine-Art Restoration Vault forty feet beneath the Île de la Cité in Paris, wearing a turpentine-stained linen restoration smock over a frayed charcoal skirt, my hands raw from eighteen straight hours of microscopic pigment spectroscopy.
On the stainless-steel conservation table behind me rested the priceless 1648 Sovereign Treaty of Westphalia & Grimaldi Maritime Charter—valued at one hundred million euros (€100,000,000)—which I had just finished restoring and authenticating for the Supreme Sovereign of Paris and Monte Carlo, Damien Killian-Rex.
Except ten minutes ago, Julian, Clarissa, and Odette had marched down the spiral stone stairs with four armed Black-Ledger security guards, swapped my authenticated 1648 vellum charter for a clumsy modern synthetic-parchment forgery bearing my stolen digital seal, and locked the six-inch-thick titanium quarantine blast doors from the corridor!
"Look at her glaring at us through the glass in that pathetic smock, Maman!" twenty-four-year-old Clarissa giggled, smoothing the skirt of the couture crimson Chanel gown she had bought with my late father's plundered auction trust while twirling my mother's stolen blood-diamond bracelet around her wrist. "For three glorious winters since Papa Henri's heart conveniently stopped in his study, little Evangeline has been down in this damp basement authenticating every Renaissance canvas and royal charter in Europe—while I sign my name to her provenance certificates Upstairs and take the applause!"
"And tonight, Clarissa darling, your career reaches its pinnacle," my stepmother Odette purred, adjusting her silver fox stole with manicured claws. "In twenty minutes, Damien Killian-Rex—the six-foot-six Godfather Emperor of the Crimson Crown Syndicate—arrives at the Palais de Justice to inspect his family's 1648 Maritime Charter. When Damien discovers that Evangeline replaced his hundred-million-euro charter with a worthless forgery—and when the aerosol canister Julian just wired into the cellar ventilation duct finishes filling this vault with Crimson-Eclipse Sovereign Neuro-Venom—Damien's own enforcers will execute Evangeline on the spot!"
My blood turned to liquid nitrogen as a high-pressure brass nozzle bolted above the ceiling air intake began to hiss—venting a thick, luminescent obsidian-and-crimson vapor cloud into the sealed subterranean vault!
Right beside my steel-toed boots, a massive, terrifying shadow rose to its full height with a bone-rattling bass growl that shook the bulletproof observation glass in its steel frame.
It was Nero—a massive 155-pound obsidian Doberman-Corso Emperor-Hound wearing a blood-diamond-studded black-titanium tactical collar engraved with a miniature golden gavel medallion!
Six nights ago, I had found the giant Emperor-Hound bleeding from a Black-Ledger tranquilizer dart in the rain-swept alley behind the Quai des Orfèvres after he escaped an ambush on Damien Killian-Rex's armored motorcade. I had smuggled the hundred-and-fifty-five-pound hound down into my subterranean conservation vault, extracted the poisoned dart with my micro-surgical forceps, and nursed him back to full lethal strength on roasted marrow bones and raw beef tenderloin.
Since that night, Nero hadn't left my side for a single second.
Now, the giant pitch-black Emperor-Hound lunged against the iron grate with a thunderous SNARL-CLANG that made Julian, Clarissa, and Odette shriek and stumble three steps backward down the outer corridor!
"That—that's Damien Killian-Rex's missing war-hound!" Julian stammered, his pale aristocrat's face draining to chalk-white as Nero's two-inch ivory fangs snapped an inch from the glass. "How did Evangeline get Nero inside the vault?! Never mind—open the Crimson-Eclipse valve to maximum! Even a hundred-and-fifty-five-pound Doberman-Corso and a cellar rat can't survive five hundred parts per million of my uncle's master neuro-venom!"
Julian slammed his palm onto the red manifold switch outside the door and fled up the stone stairs with Odette and Clarissa at his heels!
Inside the sealed vault, the overhead digital toxicity sensor began to shriek:
[HAZARD ALERT: SYNTHETIC PLATINUM-IRIDIUM NEURO-VENOM ("CRIMSON-ECLIPSE") DETECTED] [CHAMBER SATURATION IN 01:45 — LETHAL CARDIAC-NEURAL LOCK IMMINENT]
Look, my cruel stepfamily and Arch-Chancellor Alistair Thorne-Vane's nephew had made two fatal miscalculations when they locked me inside this subterranean vault.
First, they thought I was just a meek, quiet twenty-three-year-old pigment restorer who scrubbed old varnish in the dark—having zero idea that for the past three years, I had secretly operated across the European underworld under the encrypted handle The Crimson Fox, the most feared forensic provenance sleuth and molecular ink-chemist on the continent!
And second, they had no idea what my late mother, Lady Geneviève Mercier—the sixth founding matriarch of the Crimson Crown Syndicate—had hidden inside the hollow ebony handle of my conservation mallet before her yacht was sabotaged in 1996!
"Stay behind the negative-pressure fume hood, Nero!" I commanded, vaulting across the stainless-steel restoration table to slam the high-velocity HEPA exhaust fans to maximum while pulling a dual-filter chemical respirator over Nero's broad black muzzle and snapping my ultraviolet forensic laser-goggles over my eyes.
With ninety seconds left before the Crimson-Eclipse vapor overwhelmed the fume hood, I unlocked the false lead-lined base of my late mother's mahogany pigment chest and lifted out a breathtaking, six-inch ceremonial relic forged from meteoric black platinum, twenty-four-karat French gold, and a thirty-carat octagonal blood-diamond head:
Crimson Signet #6—The Imperial Blood-Diamond Gavel (Le Maillet Impérial).
Engraved in microscopic Latin and French across the golden striking collar were the intertwined crests of House Killian-Rex and House Mercier:
Veritas in Sanguine, Imperium in Aeternum — Vivienne Killian-Rex & Geneviève Mercier, MCMXCVI.
For the past forty-eight hours, ever since encrypted quantum alerts had flashed across Europe from Florence (Seat #1: Lucian & Brielle), Antwerp (Seat #2: Cash & Noelle), Chicago (Seat #3: Kieran & Rory), Tokyo (Seat #4: Zander & Talia), and Seville (Seat #5: Mateo & Camila), the thirty-carat blood-diamond head of my mother's gavel had been humming with an intensifying 88.4-kilohertz harmonic frequency!
I twisted the knurled black-platinum handle of the Imperial Blood-Diamond Gavel forty-five degrees counter-clockwise and aimed my handheld 365-Nanometer Ultraviolet Forensic Laser-Scalpel straight through the thirty-carat blood-diamond prism!
ZAP-CHIME-HUMMMMMM!
A blinding beam of crimson-violet ultraviolet light refracted through the internal microfluidic chambers of the blood-diamond gavel, projecting a three-dimensional molecular blueprint into the swirling air above my conservation table:
[SIXTH MATRIARCH RELIC AUTHENTICATED: LADY GENEVIÈVE MERCIER & EMPRESS VIVIENNE KILLIAN-REX] [STAGE 1 UV-PHOTONIC COUNTER-SERUM SYNTHESIZED — READY FOR SUB-CLAVICULAR INJECTION] [WARNING: SOVEREIGN CUSTODIAN DAMIEN KILLIAN-REX DETECTED AT 15 METERS — CARDIAC-NEURAL LOCK AT 88.2% CRITICAL!]
My breath caught in my throat.
Damien Killian-Rex was fifteen meters away—and his heart was already at eighty-eight point two percent paralysis?!
Before I could even reach for the intercom, a deafening, earth-shaking KA-BOOOOOOOM of military-grade shaped C-4 thermite blasted the six-inch titanium vault doors clean off their stone hinges!
Through the billowing cloud of silver smoke, shattered masonry, and swirling crimson mist strode a man who looked like he had walked straight out of a dark Imperial myth.
Damien Killian-Rex.
He stood six feet six inches tall in a tailored midnight-black cashmere Emperor's overcoat and bespoke three-piece charcoal suit, his shoulders impossibly broad, a jagged silver blade-scar slicing through his left eyebrow down his chiseled, aristocratic jaw, and eyes the color of molten platinum-and-storm-gray lightning.
Even with dark violet-black veins of Crimson-Eclipse neuro-venom straining visibly above his black silk collar—where an octagonal blood-diamond lapel stud pulsed in erratic, dying distress at 88.2% cardiac lock—he moved with the terrifying, absolute authority of the Supreme Godfather Emperor who ruled a four-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar sovereign empire across Paris and Monte Carlo.
Ten elite Crimson Crown guards in black tactical armor fanned out behind him with laser-sighted carbines raised—only to freeze in utter shock as 155-pound Nero let out a booming bark of recognition, while I stood behind the conservation table aiming my ultraviolet forensic laser-scalpel and the glowing Imperial Blood-Diamond Gavel straight at Damien Killian-Rex's heart!
💬 COMMENT BAIT: WELCOME TO THE SIXTH & FINAL BOOK OF THE CRIMSON CROWN SYNDICATE! ⚖️👑🐕 Drop a 🔥 in the comments for Damien Killian-Rex (6'6", The Godfather Emperor), Evangeline "Eva" Mercier (The Crimson Fox), and 155-lb pitch-black Emperor-Hound Nero!
💬 COMMENT BAIT: Odette, Clarissa, and Julian Thorne-Vane locking Eva in the subterranean vault with Crimson-Eclipse gas after stealing her work for three years—who can't wait to see them gavelled into oblivion?! 😤🔨
💬 COMMENT BAIT: Damien's cardiac lock just spiked past 88.2% as he inhaled the vault plume—and Eva has her UV laser-scalpel and Crimson Signet #6 aimed straight at his chest! Swipe straight to Chapter 2 (Damien's POV)! 👇⚡👑
