Chapter 7 - The Bloodstained Cell
The concrete pipe was narrow, freezing, and choked with rotting leaves and stagnant water.
Marcus moved forward on his elbows and knees, his weapon held securely above the waterline.
Lily crawled right behind him without making a single sound, her endurance born of years of surviving in the dark.
After fifty yards of crawling, the culvert opened into an old brick foundation beneath the main estate.
Marcus pushed aside a rusted iron grating, lifting Lily and then Sarah onto the dry stone floor.
They were inside a cavernous wine cellar filled with dusty vintage bottles and heavy oak barrels.
The air smelled intensely of damp earth, mildew, and metallic rot.
Lily hurried toward a reinforced steel door concealed behind a movable rack of wine barrels.
The door hung wide open, swinging gently on squeaking hinges.
Marcus raised his flashlight, illuminating the interior of the hidden room.
The beam revealed a windowless concrete chamber containing a rusted iron cot and heavy wrist shackles bolted to the floor.
Fresh blood was smeared across the torn mattress and splattered along the lower edge of the concrete wall.
The chains hung loose, their locking mechanisms violently bent and broken.
“Oh God…” Sarah gasped, covering her mouth as her eyes filled with tears.
Marcus’s stomach plummeted into a sickening void; he feared they had arrived too late.
Lily dropped to her knees beside the cot, pressing her trembling fingers against the wet crimson stains on the floor.
She lifted her hand, sniffed the air, and immediately shook her head with fierce conviction.
She pointed toward a trail of bloody handprints marking the opposite wall, leading toward a subterranean corridor.
Clara was not dead; she had fought back against her captors and fled into the service tunnels.
“She is heading toward the water,” Marcus said, following the crimson trail with his flashlight.
The subterranean tunnel sloped downward, the smell of lake water and gasoline growing stronger with every step.
From the end of the corridor, the muffled sound of heated shouting echoed through the concrete passage.
Marcus clicked off his flashlight, motioning for Sarah and Lily to press themselves against the wall.
He crept toward the wooden threshold that led into the estate’s private boathouse.
Through the crack in the door, Marcus saw two figures standing beneath the hanging halogen work lights.
Julian Montgomery, dressed in a pristine tailored tuxedo, stood over a bruised teenage girl tied tightly to a wooden chair.
Beside him stood Victoria, holding a plastic container of accelerant and a heavy iron wrench.
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“Sign the trust release, Clara,” Julian said coldly, holding a legal document in front of his biological daughter’s face.
“Sign it, or you will drown in this boat before the clock strikes midnight,” Julian warned without an ounce of mercy.
