Chapter 13 - THE DOOR OPENED AGAIN
Dominic followed Harper’s scream.
Smoke burned his eyes.
He reached the hidden stone door and pulled the iron cross.
Nothing happened.
Nathan had locked the mechanism from the tunnel side.
The cathedral countdown showed forty-eight seconds.
Dominic stepped back and fired three rounds into the hinges.
The stone did not move.
“Mia,” he shouted.
Her voice came faintly through the wall.
“Dominic.”
“Move away from the door.”
He emptied the weapon into the locking plate.
The metal cracked.
Daniel struck from the other side with the butt of his gun.
Together, they broke the mechanism.
The door opened.
Smoke rushed into the tunnel.
Dominic entered.
Mia stood several feet away with Harper in her arms.
Sofia supported Claire against the wall.
Daniel pointed toward the cathedral.
“The bomb.”
Dominic looked at the countdown.
Twelve seconds.
They ran.
The passage curved sharply downward.
The explosion struck before they reached the subway line.
The blast tore through the tunnel.
Dominic threw himself over Mia and Harper.
Stone collapsed behind them.
Heat rolled across his back.
For several seconds, nobody could breathe.
Then Harper began crying beneath him.
Dominic lifted his weight.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
Mia touched his shoulder.
His suit had burned through.
Blood ran along his back.
“You are injured.”
“I can walk.”
Daniel checked Claire.
She was unconscious but alive.
Sofia held the memory card inside her fist.
“The files survived.”
Dominic looked toward the dark tunnel ahead.
“Nathan escaped this way.”
Daniel glanced at the damaged ceiling.
“We need to stop the estate relay first.”
They moved through the underground line.
A small electric cart waited on the tracks.
Claire had told the truth.
Daniel placed her in the rear seat.
Mia held Harper.
Dominic drove.
The tunnel opened beneath the western foundation of the Vale estate.
Smoke already drifted through the access shaft.
Nathan had reached the house before them.
They entered the cellar through a door hidden behind the wine racks.
The room where Mia had been imprisoned looked different now.
The racks had been moved.
A steel control panel covered the wall.
Red lights flashed across it.
The estate countdown showed one minute and forty seconds.
Daniel opened the panel.
Dozens of wires filled the compartment.
“The red wire goes home,” Harper whispered.
Mia looked at her.
The child pointed toward a red cable running beneath the floor.
Daniel followed it to a secondary box near the locked cellar door.
The relay had been installed behind the new brass latch.
Nathan had hidden the trigger in plain sight.
Daniel cut the red cable.
The countdown stopped at twenty-three seconds.
Every monitor went black.
For one breath, nobody moved.
Then a slow knock came from behind the far wall.
Mia froze.
It was the same weak rhythm Harper had heard for three nights.
Knock.
Pause.
Knock.
Dominic pulled the wine rack aside.
A narrow compartment appeared.
Inside were three bound men.
One was Mia’s husband.
He was thinner.
Older.
Scarred across one side of his face.
But alive.
Mia fell to her knees.
“Evan?”
His eyes opened.
He looked at Harper.
The child stared at the stranger her mother had mourned for four years.
Evan began to cry.
Nathan had not killed him.
He had kept him beneath the estate as leverage against Mia and Detective Reyes.
Dominic looked around the cellar.
For years, he had believed enemies waited beyond his walls.
The worst betrayal had been breathing beneath his own home.
May you like
A car engine roared outside.
Nathan was escaping.
