Chapter 9 - The Ultimatum
The tension in the damp, echoing tunnel was thick enough to cut with a very sharp knife.
Uncle Richard pressed the cold barrel of his pistol against the back of Thomas’s head, his finger resting heavily on the trigger.
Thomas looked completely battered and bruised, but his eyes silently pleaded with Leo not to surrender the book.
Leo slowly reached into his soaked backpack, his small fingers brushing against the thick leather cover of the master ledger.
"Do not give it to him, Leo," Grandpa Henry ordered, stepping slightly in front of his young grandson to shield him.
"If he gets that book, all of us are going to die down here anyway," Henry stated with absolute, chilling certainty.
Richard laughed dryly, a hollow sound that bounced terrifyingly off the curved concrete walls of the sewer.
"The old man is right, but handing it over might buy you a few extra minutes of breathing," Richard mocked cruelly.
Leo's mind raced at a million miles an hour, trying desperately to remember everything he had seen in his grandfather's secret room.
He remembered a blueprint of this exact tunnel system, detailing a massive, rusted pressure valve located directly above Richard's current position.
"Okay, Uncle Richard, you win," Leo said loudly, taking a hesitant step forward and holding the heavy ledger out in the open.
Richard smiled greedily and stepped away from Thomas for just a fraction of a second to grab his ultimate prize.
In that singular, split-second window, Leo did not throw the book at his uncle as expected.
Instead, Leo threw the heavy ledger straight up into the air, aiming perfectly for the rusted release lever of the overhead pressure valve.
The heavy book struck the rusty metal lever with a loud, resounding crack, snapping it completely off its ancient hinges.
A massive, explosive burst of highly pressurized steam immediately blasted downward, engulfing Richard in a blinding, scalding white cloud.
Richard screamed in agony, dropping his pistol as the blistering steam completely obscured everyone's vision in the tight corridor.
Thomas immediately tackled Richard to the wet concrete ground, using his remaining strength to pin the struggling man down.
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"Run up the ladder, right now!" Thomas yelled through the thick, swirling steam, securing Richard's arms behind his back.
Leo grabbed the ledger from the ground, pushed his mother and grandfather up the metal rungs, and climbed frantically toward the street above.
