Chapter 5 - The Desperate Escape
""Emma!"" My voice shattered into hysterical sobs as I threw my body against the impenetrable steel door. ""No, no, no! Please God, not my baby! Damian, do something! He’s going to sell my baby!""
""Grace, stop! Look at me!"" Damian’s hands gripped my shoulders in the dark, his grip firm, grounding, and steady. Even in the dim crimson glow of the emergency light, his eyes burned with fierce intensity. ""Listen to the sound of my voice. Panicking will burn our oxygen faster. We have less than fifteen minutes before the air turns toxic.""
""I don't care about the oxygen!"" I wept, clawing at his chest. ""My daughter is in the hands of a monster! She was praying in that chapel because she thought I was hungry, Damian! She’s only three years old! She sleeps with a one-eyed bear because she thinks it keeps the bad dreams away!""
""And she is going to sleep in her own warm bed tonight,"" Damian vowed fiercely, his voice cutting through my hysteria like a blade. ""My father designed this vault. Do you really think Leonardo Belucci would build a panic room without a secondary escape route in case of a siege? He was paranoid, Grace. He trusted no one.""
Damian pulled a heavy steel flashlight from an emergency supply kit mounted on the wall. He swept the beam across the concrete floor, examining the joints where the reinforced walls met the bedrock of the mansion's foundation.
""Help me move these ledgers,"" he commanded, already tossing heavy leather-bound books and metal boxes aside.
I scrambled to my knees, ignoring the splinters and cuts on my fingers as I dragged heavy strongboxes across the floor. Beneath the third stack of ledgers, hidden beneath a layer of false mortar, lay a heavy cast-iron grate secured by four industrial bolts.
""An old drainage culvert,"" Damian said, kneeling beside it. ""It leads directly to the boiler room beneath the east wing. But it hasn't been opened in thirty years. The bolts are rusted solid.""
He grabbed an iron crowbar from the emergency kit, jamming the wedge beneath the grate's rim. He threw his entire weight onto the bar. Veins bulged along his neck and forearms, his muscles straining against the oxidized metal. A groan of agonizing iron echoed through the vault, but the bolts refused to budge.
The air was growing noticeably thinner. My chest felt tight, an invisible weight pressing down upon my lungs. Spots danced before my eyes.
""Damian..."" I gasped, leaning against the wall, fighting the dizziness creeping into my brain. ""It's... too tight...""
""Get over here and pull with me!"" he roared, refusing to surrender. ""Think of Emma! Pull, Grace!""
The thought of my daughter crying out for me in the back of some stranger's car ignited a surge of pure maternal fury. I lunged forward, grabbing the crowbar with both hands, throwing every ounce of my body weight, every ounce of my desperate love for my child, into the lever alongside him.
CRACK!
The top two bolts sheared off with the sound of a gunshot. The iron grate popped upward by three inches. With a ferocious grunt, Damian kicked the crowbar deeper, wrenching the heavy iron cover completely off its hinges and tossing it clattering across the concrete.
A blast of cold, stale air rushed up from the dark tunnel below.
""I'll drop down first and catch you,"" Damian said, lowering his large frame into the narrow shaft. ""The drop is eight feet. Jump directly into my arms.""
I didn't hesitate. I slid into the darkness, trusting the man whose family I had feared my entire life. His strong arms caught me cleanly, absorbing the impact before setting me onto the damp gravel floor of the drainage tunnel.
Above us, through the tunnel's echoing acoustic pipes, we heard the sudden, sharp sound of Emma screaming.
""Mommy! Mommy, where are you?!""
Vincent had brought her down to the underground garage.
May you like
Damian reached behind his back, drawing a suppressed semi-automatic pistol from his hidden holster. The look on his face was no longer human; it was the face of an apex predator ready to tear apart anything standing between him and his family.
""Stay behind me, Grace,"" he whispered, cocking the slide with a deadly click. ""Tonight, the Belucci syndicate cleans house.""
