Chapter 3 - The Servant Tunnels
The footsteps outside grew louder by the second.
Matilda knew they had less than ten seconds before the door opened.
She threw Gabriel’s heavy arm over her shoulder and braced herself.
For years, the men in this house had mocked her size and her weight.
But right now, her physical strength was the only thing keeping the king of Chicago alive.
She lifted him off the table with a powerful grunt.
Gabriel gritted his teeth, refusing to make a sound of pain.
She dragged him toward the back of the medical wing, where laundry was usually stored.
Matilda kicked away a metal cart, revealing a small, rusted grate in the wall.
“The servant tunnels,” she whispered rapidly.
“They run beneath the entire estate.”
She pulled the grate open and shoved Gabriel inside just as the main doors burst open.
Matilda dove into the dark tunnel and pulled the grate shut behind them.
Above them, she heard Lorenzo’s furious voice echoing in the clinic.
“Find them!” Lorenzo roared upon seeing Carmine’s dead body.
“Lock down the estate and shoot that fat maid on sight!”
Matilda held her breath, wrapping her arms tightly around Gabriel in the pitch-black tunnel.
They crawled slowly through the damp, dusty darkness.
Gabriel’s breathing was incredibly shallow, and his skin was burning with a sudden fever.
“You are surprisingly strong,” Gabriel whispered, his lips brushing against her ear.
“I have to carry eighty pounds of laundry up three flights of stairs every day,” she replied nervously.
They moved for twenty agonizing minutes until they reached the end of the passage.
The tunnel led to a heavy iron door that opened into the underground parking garage.
Matilda pushed against the metal handle, but it refused to budge.
She pushed harder, her muscles screaming in protest.
“It’s locked from the outside,” she gasped in panic.
Gabriel cursed softly in Italian.
Suddenly, a thick, gray cloud began pouring into the tunnel through the ventilation shafts.
It smelled like burning sulfur and deadly chemicals.
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Lorenzo’s men had figured out where they were hiding.
They were pumping toxic gas into the tunnels to suffocate them like rats.
