Chapter 2 - The Locked Room
The sudden darkness was broken only by the faint glow of the baby monitor on the dresser.
My niece finally began to cry, her tiny wails piercing the suffocating silence of the locked nursery.
I rocked her gently, pressing my back against the wall to ensure no one could sneak up behind me.
David immediately lunged for the bedroom door, twisting the brass handle with all his strength.
It was completely jammed, locked by some electronic mechanism we didn't even know existed in this house.
"Open this door!" David roared, slamming his heavy fists against the solid oak wood.
His mother simply stood in the center of the room, her silhouette illuminated by the faint green light of the monitor.
"The smart-home system is entirely under my control now," she announced with terrifying calmness.
"The oxygen flow to this specific room will begin to decrease in exactly ten minutes."
My heart hammered against my ribs as I processed her horrific threat.
"Are you insane?" I screamed, feeling the fresh blood on my cheek dripping down to my chin.
"Your own granddaughter is in here!"
The aunt let out a cruel, mocking laugh from the corner of the room.
"That thing is not our blood," the aunt sneered venomously.
"We ran the private tests weeks ago, and David isn't the father."
David stopped hitting the door and slowly turned around.
"You're lying," David whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and absolute fury.
"Sarah would never cheat on me."
The grandmother pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and tossed it onto the floor.
"Read the lab report yourself," she challenged him.
"The baby has a rare genetic marker that neither you nor Sarah possess."
I looked down at the tiny, fragile life in my arms, refusing to believe a word these monsters were saying.
"Even if that were true, you don't try to kidnap a baby!" I shouted.
"Oh, we aren't kidnapping her," the grandmother corrected smoothly.
"We are returning her to her actual father, who paid us a very large sum of money to retrieve his property."
Before David could react, a heavy, rhythmic pounding echoed from the other side of the locked bedroom door.
Someone was trying to break in with a sledgehammer.
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"Ah," the grandmother smiled, her teeth glowing faintly in the dim light.
"It seems the buyer has finally arrived to collect."
