An hour before the guests arrived, my husband smashed my face into the bathroom mirror. His mother stepped over the silver shards and sneered, "Clean up this disgusting mess." They thought I was just a fragile, terrified wife. They didn't know about the matte-black federal distress fob hidden deep in my pocket. Three silent clicks would bring a tactical raid. But when my trembling fingers finally reached for it, my blood ran absolute cold. The device was broken. Discovery meant death. I had less than a second to make the most terrifying gamble of my life...

Victor stepped slowly down the central aisle of the greenhouse, his heavy boots crunching softly on old pottery shards and soil. His flashlight beam swept back and forth across the rotted wooden planting benches.

"You really made a mess in the bathroom, Sarah," Victor said, his tone conversational, laced with dangerous malice. "Vance had to change his shirt twice. His mother is furious about her silk rug. You know how Beatrice gets when her things are ruined."

He paused directly in front of the iron grate that concealed my tunnel.

The beam of his high-intensity flashlight dropped, illuminating the fresh, dark blood dripping from the bottom of the rusty iron bars.

Victor smiled—a slow, terrifying widening of his lips.

"Found you," he whispered.

He raised his silenced pistol, aligning the barrel directly with the iron grate, preparing to shoot through the gaps.

"Victor!" a loud, urgent voice barked from the greenhouse doorway.

Vance stepped into the structure, his face flushed red, his hair disheveled, holding a heavy revolver in his hand.

"Did you find her?" Vance demanded, stepping briskly down the aisle.

"She's in the old utility duct beneath the bench, sir," Victor replied without lowering his weapon. "I'm about to clear her out."

"No," Vance growled, pushing Victor’s gun down with his arm. "I want her pulled out of there alive. My father just got a call from our gate watchman. There are three unidentified vans sitting on the highway shoulder two miles out. We need Sarah back in the main house right now as leverage in case the authorities are poking around."

Leverage.

Vance didn't just want to silence me; he needed me as a human shield if Marcus breached the compound.

"Pull the grate open, Victor," Vance ordered, taking a step back and aiming his revolver at the iron bars. "Sarah! Get your ass out of that tunnel right now, or I swear to God I will fire six rounds through these bars and drag your corpse into the living room!"

Inside the narrow pipe, my back pressed against the cold concrete walls, I knew I had reached the end of my quiet options. If I surrendered now, I would be used to stop Marcus from taking down their empire.

I looked down at my feet.

Lying in the damp dirt at the base of the duct was an ancient, twelve-inch iron maintenance wrench left behind by workers decades ago—heavy, solid, choked with thick red rust.

I wrapped my bandaged right hand around the cold handle.

"I'm giving you three seconds, Sarah!" Vance screamed, his thumb pulling back the heavy hammer of his revolver with a loud, mechanical click. "ONE!"

"I'm coming out!" I cried out, my voice cracking with feigned, hysterical terror. "Please don't shoot! Please!"

"Get the latch, Victor," Vance barked.

Victor holstered his pistol, reached down with both hands, and grabbed the rusty iron padlock on the grate. He yanked the lock up to inspect the mechanism.