Chapter 4 - Into the Bedrock
I did not answer her with words.
In one fluid, explosive movement, I stepped between Vivien and the leather armchair, my right hand pulling the heavy steel crowbar from my overcoat, the metal gleaming cold under the low sconce light.
Vivien did not gasp. She did not step back.
Instead, her face transformed. The aristocratic softness vanished, replaced by a expression of cold, calculating hatred that I had never seen on a human face before.
“Marco!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing off the forty-foot ceiling like a trumpet call. “MARCO! HE’S HERE!”
She reached into the pocket of her ivory silk gown and pulled out a small, silver-plated snub-nosed revolver.
She didn't hesitate. She leveled the barrel straight at my chest.
“You should have stayed in New Jersey, Julian,” she hissed, her finger tightening on the trigger.
Before her finger could complete the pull, I threw the crowbar with all the force in my upper body.
The thirty-inch steel bar spun through the air, striking her right wrist with a sickening crack.
The revolver discharged into the floorboards—a deafening BANG that shattered the bevelled glass on the grandfather clock behind me—before clattering down the marble stairs.
Vivien shrieked in pain, clutching her broken wrist as she collapsed onto the carpeted steps.
I didn't wait to see if she was getting up.
I scooped Emma up from behind the armchair with my left arm, retrieved the revolver from the bottom step with my right, and bolted through the service door behind the staircase.
I slammed the heavy door behind us, threw the brass deadbolt into place, and began sprinting down the narrow stone stairs into the sub-basement.
Behind us, the heavy wooden door rattled violently as someone on the other side began smashing against it with a shoulder.
“JULIAN!” Marco’s voice boomed through the thick oak from the hall above. “DON’T DO THIS, MAN! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DEALING WITH! THE SENATOR HAS THE FEDERAL MARSHALS IN HIS POCKET! YOU CAN’T WIN THIS!”
I didn't answer.
I reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs—the primary wine cellar level.
The air here was instantly colder, thick with the damp, earthy smell of stone, oak barrels, and aging wine. Long rows of iron racks stretched out into the darkness, holding thousands of bottles under low, orange-tinted LED lights.
I didn't stop at the wine racks.
I ran to the far back corner of the cellar, where a heavy, unpainted steel door was set directly into the natural limestone wall.
This was the entrance to the deep bedrock corridors—the Prohibition-era tunnels that led to Vault 4.
I pulled the four-inch skeleton key from my pocket, jammed it into the keyhole of the steel door, and turned it with all my strength.
The old lock levers groaned, grinding against forty years of rust and dried grease, before dropping into place with a heavy THUNK.
I yanked the heavy door open, pulled Emma inside, and slammed it shut behind us, throwing the interior manual bolt just as Marco’s heavy footsteps rounded the corner of the upper wine cellar.
BOOM.
Something heavy—likely a fire extinguisher or a sledgehammer—hit the outside of the steel door.
“JULIAN! OPEN THE DOOR!”
I ignored him.
We were in the deep dark now.
The flashlight on my phone illuminated a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel carved directly out of the grey schist bedrock. Water dripped from the ceiling in steady, rhythmic drops, forming shallow pools on the uneven floor.
“Emma,” I whispered, my heart pounding like a sledgehammer against my ribs as I carried her down the slippery incline. “Is this where your mommy went?”
Emma looked around the dark tunnel, her tiny hands holding tight to the lapel of my coat. She pointed toward the far end of the corridor, where a second, massive steel door stood embedded in a three-foot-thick wall of reinforced concrete.
Vault 4.
A digital pressure gauge mounted beside the vault door glowed red.
INTERNAL OXYGEN LEVEL: 12% CRITICAL WARNING – ATMOSPHERIC DEPOSITION
Twelve percent.
Normal air is twenty-one percent. At twelve percent, confusion sets in within minutes. At ten percent, unconsciousness. At eight, brain death.
Someone had turned off the secondary ventilation pump from the main house control board seven days ago.
I ran to the door.
The lock on Vault 4 was a massive, three-spoke wheel mechanism backed by a secondary mechanical keyway.
I inserted the steel skeleton key into the keyway, turned it until it stopped, and grabbed the outer spoke of the heavy wheel with both hands.
“Come on,” I growled through my teeth, putting all two hundred pounds of my weight into the wheel.
It didn't move.
The iron spokes were seized by rust and neglect.
Behind us, fifty yards up the dark bedrock tunnel, the outer steel door began to buckle under repeated blows from a heavy sledgehammer.
CLANG.
CLANG.
They were coming through. In less than two minutes, Marco would have a breakevery point through that inner bolt.
I looked down at the silver revolver in my right hand.
I looked at the rust-bound lock cylinder on the vault door.
I set the barrel of the revolver directly against the keyway mechanism—where the brass tumblers met the main steel deadbolt bar—and pulled the trigger twice.
BANG! BANG!
The double explosion inside the narrow stone tunnel was deafening, filling the air with the acrid stench of cordite and pulverized metal fragments.
The force of the point-blank impacts shattered the internal lock housing.
I grabbed the wheel spoke again and hauled upward with everything I had.
This time, with a violent, screeching grind of sheared metal and broken gears, the wheel spun ninety degrees to the left.
The massive four-inch steel locking bolts retracted out of the concrete frame.
I yanked the heavy vault door open.
A cloud of stale, freezing, oxygen-starved air rushed out of the dark interior, smelling of damp cement, old cardboard, and...
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On the floor, three feet inside the threshold, lay a motionless figure wrapped in a dark wool housecoat.
Sophia.
