Chapter 4 - The Ghost
Mira stared at the older woman, her heart hammering violently against her bruised ribs.
"Mother?" Mira whispered, her voice cracking with overwhelming emotion and pure shock.
The woman looked at Mira with incredibly cold, entirely emotionless eyes.
"Leila is dead," the woman stated bluntly, her voice lacking any trace of maternal warmth.
Mira felt a crushing wave of despair wash completely over her exhausted body.
"I am Zara, your mother's twin sister," the woman explained while checking her assault rifle.
Samir groaned in agonizing pain on the floor, pressing his hand desperately against his bleeding shoulder.
Zara looked down at the injured Sheikh with a look of absolute, unadulterated disgust.
"You should have let Tariq finish him off," Zara spat venomously.
Mira stood up and positioned herself defensively between her bleeding companion and her fierce aunt.
"He just took a bullet to save my life!" Mira shouted angrily.
Zara laughed a bitter, humorless laugh that sent chills down Mira's spine.
"He is protecting the throne, not you, foolish girl."
Zara explained that Samir's brother, the current King Malik, was the monster who had ordered Leila's death.
She claimed the entire royal family was completely corrupt and entirely beyond redemption.
"We need to get to the medical wing," Mira pleaded, ignoring the woman's harsh political rant.
Zara shook her head and walked toward a heavy steel valve on the tunnel wall.
"I did not come here to save a royal sympathizer, I came here to cleanse the palace."
Zara grabbed the heavy metal wheel and turned it with all her formidable strength.
A terrifying, deep rumbling sound echoed beneath their feet, shaking the very foundation of the tunnel.
Mira realized with absolute horror what her crazy aunt had just done.
Zara had manually opened the ancient floodgates connected to the nearby river.
Millions of gallons of freezing, dark water began violently rushing into the enclosed maintenance tunnel.
May you like
Zara slipped through a high security door and locked it securely from the outside.
She left Mira and bleeding Samir completely trapped in a rapidly filling, inescapable watery grave.
