Chapter 7 - Bloodlines and Blackwood
Arthur didn't hesitate. He pulled the silk curtain sash from the nearby window frame, binding Claire's wrists behind her back with brutal, efficient knots before hauling her up and shoving her into the heavy service closet beside the pantry, turning the brass deadbolt with a sharp flick. Her frantic screams and muffled thumps against the thick oak door faded into white noise as Arthur sprinted into the dark corridor.
"Mother! Lily!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the vaulted corridors of Blackwood Manor.
The mansion, built in the late nineteenth century by their ruthless great-grandfather, was a labyrinth of heavy oak paneling, secret dumbwaiters, and hidden passages designed during an era of family paranoia. The electricity in this wing had flickered out completely, plunged into darkness by the severed chandelier wiring in the dining room. Arthur moved by memory, his hand tracing the cold damask wallpaper as he moved toward the ancestral library at the rear of the second floor.
He found Lily first. She was huddled beneath a portrait of their grandmother in the portrait gallery, clutching a bronze candlestick like a club, her small body trembling violently.
"Daddy!" she cried, dropping the candlestick with a clatter and launching herself into his arms. Arthur swept her up, burying his face in her dark hair, feeling the frantic thump of her tiny heart.
"I'm here, baby. You're safe. Where is Grandma?" he asked, trying to keep the panic from bleeding into his tone.
"She went to the study," Lily whispered, sniffing back her tears. "She told me to hide here. She said Uncle Julian was sick in his heart, and that she had to stop him before he opened the iron door."
The iron door. The ancestral vault built into the bedrock beneath Marcus Sterling’s private study. It was where their father kept the true ledgers—the ones that documented how the family fortune had been carved out of the Vance family's ruins, and where Marcus had hoarded bearer bonds and untraceable bullion as contingency against financial ruin.
"Stay here, Lily. Lock this door behind me and do not open it for anyone but me. Do you hear me?" Arthur set her down inside the linen press, handing her a flashlight from the wall mount.
"Daddy, please don't leave me," she begged, her hazel eyes wide with pure dread.
"I will be back in two minutes. I swear to you."
Arthur closed the press door, turned, and bolted down the hall toward Marcus's study. The heavy mahogany doors to the study were already ajar, spilling a faint, ghostly orange light across the floorboards. As Arthur reached the threshold, he stopped dead.
May you like
The heavy Persian rug had been pulled back, revealing the iron hatch set directly into the parquet floor. Standing over it, holding a kerosene lamp in one hand, was Julian. But he wasn't alone. Eleanor stood inches away from him, holding a heavy silver letter opener pressed directly against Julian's throat, while Julian held a small silver chain, snapped from her neck, dangling between his scarred fingers.
"Give it back, Julian," Eleanor said with a terrifying, calm coldness. "You are not your father. You will not survive what is down there."
