Chapter 3 - Blood Ties
The heavy steel bulkhead at the entrance of the brick tunnel slammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid. Elena whirled around, the beam of her phone dancing across the smooth, impenetrable metal. There was no latch, no handle, and no emergency release on their side.
"It's soundproof," Leo said, his voice flat, drained of all childhood warmth. "Once they trigger the lockdown from the master panel in the study, this whole sub-basement is sealed airtight. Nobody upstairs can hear a thing."
Elena returned to the iron gate of Leo’s cell. She pulled a hairpin from her bun and tried jamming it into the padlock securing his chain, but the lock was a modern, high-grade hardened alloy. Her fingers slipped, scraping against the rough iron until her knuckles bled.
"Stop," Leo murmured gently, reaching through the bars to touch her wrist. "You won't pick that. Marcus has the key. He’s her chief of security."
"Why?" Elena asked, looking between the bruised young boy and the toddler clinging desperately to her apron. "Why would a mother lock her own children in a dungeon beneath a ballroom?"
Leo gave a bitter, shuddering laugh that sounded far too old for a ten-year-old. "Because we aren't her heirs. We’re her spares. When Victoria was diagnosed with systemic organ failure three years ago, she didn't join an international donor registry like normal people. She commissioned private fertility clinics in Eastern Europe using her own DNA mixed with anonymous donors. We were grown in clean rooms, delivered under fake birth certificates, and hidden away here."
Elena felt the room spin. The lavish party above, the clinking crystal, the society women laughing in couture gowns—it was all a gilded veneer over a slaughterhouse.
"She had a liver transplant six months ago," Leo whispered, pulling up the hem of his oversized sweatshirt to reveal a long, jagged surgical scar running across his right rib cage. "That was me. Next week is her birthday gala. And her kidneys are failing." He pointed a trembling, gaunt finger at little Mia. "She’s the match for the kidneys."
The sheer depravity made Elena nauseous. She hugged Mia tighter, feeling the little girl’s heartbeat rabbiting against her chest. "I won't let her touch either of you again. I swear it."
"You don't understand," Leo said, shaking his head. "The tunnel isn't a dead end. Long ago, these passages ran under the entire neighborhood down to the old harbor docks. There’s an old coal chute three rooms down, behind the boiler room. But to get to it, we need to get through this grate, and you have to find a way to cut this chain."
Elena scanned the corridor. Near a mound of rusted masonry tools, she spotted an antique cast-iron pry bar, heavy and pitted with age. She set Mia down on a clean dry patch of brick and took the heavy iron bar with both hands. Jamming the wedge between the lock and the stone wall, she threw her entire body weight against it.
Muscles burning, her veins bulging against her pale skin, Elena pulled. The iron creaked. Stone dust showered her hair. With a sharp, ringing snap, the ancient mortar around the anchor bolt gave way, ripping the ring free from the bedrock.
Leo stumbled forward, free from the wall, though the heavy iron chain still dragged from his ankle. "You did it," he whispered, awe breaking through his weary facade.
May you like
Elena helped him up, but their relief was instantly shattered. A loud speaker mounted high in the brick arch crackled to life with deafening static.
"How touching," Victoria’s cold voice echoed from the speaker overhead. "A servant playing savior. But you've wasted your time, Elena. I've just ordered the basement vents flooded with industrial pest fumigant. You have approximately four minutes before your lungs begin to dissolve."
