Chapter 6
The hidden servants' stairwell was a claustrophobic, concrete descent into the bowels of the mansion. Lila hurried down the steep steps, her soft cashmere sweater brushing against the cold, dusty walls. Henry was sobbing quietly against her shoulder, his little hands gripping the fabric of her clothing like a lifeline.
"We're almost there, sweetie," Lila whispered rapidly, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She reached the bottom landing, stepping out into a wide, dimly lit subterranean corridor that connected the wine cellar to the secure underground bunker. The heavy thud of automatic gunfire echoed from the floors above them, the sound vibrating violently through the concrete ceiling.
Lila sprinted down the corridor, her eyes fixed on the massive steel vault door fifty yards away. She knew the code—Tristan had made her memorize it the moment they entered the secure wing.
She reached the biometric keypad, her hands shaking so violently she could barely punch the numbers. 0-4-1-2.
The keypad flashed green. The heavy steel tumblers disengaged with a loud, mechanical clank, and the door hissed open an inch.
Before she could pull it open fully, a heavy, booted foot kicked the wooden doors of the wine cellar open at the opposite end of the corridor.
Lila spun around. A Rowe mercenary in full tactical gear stepped into the hallway. He was covered in soot, his assault rifle raised. He spotted Lila and the child immediately.
"Hold it right there, bitch," the mercenary sneered, raising the barrel of his rifle.
Lila didn't freeze. Pure, primal maternal instinct hijacked her nervous system. She knew she couldn't pull the heavy steel door open and get inside before he pulled the trigger. She needed a distraction.
She grabbed a heavy, antique fire extinguisher mounted on the wall next to the bunker. With a desperate scream, she hurled the metal cylinder down the hallway directly at the mercenary.
The man instinctively ducked, the heavy cylinder smashing into the concrete wall beside him and exploding in a massive cloud of thick white chemical foam.
The hallway was instantly blinded.
Lila didn't wait to see if he was incapacitated. Instead of going for the slow-moving vault door, she turned and bolted into the narrow, pitch-black maintenance tunnels that ran parallel to the main corridor—a labyrinth of pipes and wiring she knew intimately from her years cleaning the estate's hidden spaces.
"You can't hide in the dark!" the mercenary roared, coughing through the foam as he blindly fired a burst of bullets down the main hallway.
Lila squeezed through the tight access panel, dragging Henry with her into the absolute darkness of the crawlspace. She pressed her hand over the toddler's mouth, huddling behind a massive iron water main.
"Shh, Henry, don't make a sound," she breathed into his ear, tears streaming down her face.
She could hear the heavy boots of the mercenary pacing the corridor outside the panel. He was hunting them. He began kicking the access panels one by one, the metal groaning under his assault.
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"Where are you, little maid?" the mercenary taunted, his voice dripping with sadistic glee. "Sabrina wants the kid alive, but she said I could do whatever I wanted with you."
Lila squeezed her eyes shut, pulling Henry tighter against her chest, trapped in the dark, waiting for the monster to find them.
