Chapter 3 - The Vault Below
The wine cellar beneath the Sterling estate wasn't a cozy rust-colored room for dinner parties; it was a reinforced subterranean vault built into the original foundations of the 1920s mansion. The walls were two-foot-thick poured concrete, lined with iron racks holding thousands of vintage bottles, and sealed by a solid oak door fitted with a heavy commercial keypad lock.
Vance shoved me hard into the center of the room. I stumbled, hitting my knees on the cold slate floor, my blood splashing across the polished stone.
"Enjoy the dark, Sarah," Vance sneered, standing in the doorway. He wiped his hands on a clean cloth he had grabbed from the pantry. "When the board members leave tonight, you and I are going to have a very long conversation about where you were last Tuesday when you claimed you were visiting your mother."
"I was at her grave, Vance," I whispered, pulling myself up against a heavy oak tasting table.
"You were at the federal courthouse," he corrected coldly, a terrible, victorious smile spreading across his face. "Did you really think my security team wouldn't track your car? Did you think you could hand over my private shipping manifests to the prosecutor's office without me knowing?"
My stomach dropped into a cold, endless pit.
He knew. He had known all along.
"You're a fool, Sarah," Vance said, leaning against the doorframe. "You thought you were saving yourself. You didn't realize that the prosecutor you met with works for my father's holdings firm. Every document you handed over came right back to my desk within two hours."
He stepped back and gripped the edge of the heavy door.
"You're going to stay in this room until the doctors arrive with the sedatives," Vance said softly. "And when you wake up, you won't even remember your own name."
He slammed the oak door shut.
The heavy electronic lock engaged with a dense, metallic thud-clack.
Absolute, terrifying darkness descended upon the room.
I sat in the pitch-black silence, hearing only the fast, shallow sound of my own breathing and the steady drip of blood falling from my fingers onto the slate floor.
Nineteen minutes remaining.
I pulled off the hem of my cardigan with my teeth and wrapped the fabric tightly around my bleeding hands, securing the makeshift bandages with my teeth. The pain was sickening, but I couldn't afford to pass out.
In the total darkness, my eyes gradually adjusted to a tiny sliver of amber light shining from beneath the heavy oak door.
I knew this cellar. Six months ago, during a holiday party, Vance had made me stock the lower storage racks. I knew that behind the central wine display sat an old iron maintenance access door that led to the estate's original utility tunnel—a narrow passage built to house the old steam pipes running to the carriage house.
If I stayed in this vault, I was a sitting duck when the sedatives arrived. I needed to move toward the outer perimeter of the estate to guide Marcus's unit inside.
I felt my way along the heavy iron wine racks in the dark, my boots sliding slightly on the smooth slate. My bandaged hands scraped against cold glass bottles until my fingers hit the cold, rough surface of rusted iron behind the third rack.
The maintenance latch was stiff, choked with decades of dust and rust.
I jammed my shoulder against the steel lever. It groaned softly, throwing off a cloud of iron flakes, then gave way with a sharp crack.
The hidden hatch swung open, exposing a dark, narrow corridor that smelled of damp earth and old copper.
May you like
Seventeen minutes remaining.
I crawled into the tunnel, pulling the heavy iron door shut behind me just as I heard the faint, distant sound of footsteps descending the main basement staircase above.
