Chapter 16 - The Cold Path to Freedom
The stone chute was narrow, slick with moss, and claustrophobic. Victoria crawled ahead, moving with surprising agility fueled by sheer maternal terror, while I held Maya tight against my chest, pushing forward through the darkness on my knees. The air tasted of copper and damp earth.
Behind us, a muffled detonation shook the foundation. The cellar door had been breached.
“Hurry, Elena!” Victoria gasped from the darkness ahead. “Before Alexander finds the shaft!”
Maya didn't cry. Instead, she wrapped her small arms around my neck, whispering a nursery rhyme under her breath in a brave, heartbreaking effort to keep herself from screaming. Every shudder of the ground sent chills down my spine. Down in the tunnel, the silence was only broken by the distant rattle of automatic fire from the main house. Julian was fighting. Alone.
We reached a small iron landing where the tunnel split into two directions. A rusted lever stood beside an emergency shut-off box painted in flaking red enamel.
“Here,” Victoria panted, her manicured fingers clawing at the rusted iron toggle. “Julian said to pull this. It drops the ceiling over the entry portal.”
I paused, looking back down the dark corridor we had just traversed. “If we drop it, Julian can’t use this route to escape.”
“If we don’t drop it, Alexander’s death squad will crawl in behind us and shoot us like rats in a pipe!” Victoria snapped, her aristocratic mask crumbling into sheer panic. “Elena, my oldest son is a monster! He murdered his own father! He poisoned Ethan Vanderbilt! Do you think he will hesitate to kill you? Pull the damned lever!”
My hand hovered over the cold iron. A memory flared in my mind—Julian standing before the shattered window, his broad shoulders taking the crimson targeting lasers to shield Maya and me. He had chosen us over his dynasty, over his fortune, over his own life.
“No,” I said, stepping back.
“What? Are you insane?” Victoria lunged for the handle.
I raised the pistol Julian had given me, pointing it directly at the mechanism. “We don’t trap him. We leave the line open. If Alexander’s men come through, I’ll deal with them here. But I will not seal Julian’s coffin.”
Victoria stared at me in disbelief, her breath coming in ragged gasps. For a long moment, the matriarch saw something in my eyes that cowed her—a feral, unyielding determination born of love.
Before she could speak, a crackling sound erupted from the handheld radio pinned to Victoria’s robe. A voice hissed over the static:
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*“Team Two, this is Vanguard. The target has breached the upper terrace. The younger brother is wounded. I repeat, Blackwood-Two is hit and falling back toward the glass conservatory. Secure the perimeter charges.”*
My blood turned to liquid ice. Julian was hit.