Chapter 7 - The Deep Cell Unlocked
The steel blast door looked like something built for a military bunker, equipped with an old manual combination wheel and a heavy mechanical locking bar.
Dust covered the frame, but the brass wheel showed clear grease marks around the numbers 18, 42, and 09.
“Open it,” I ordered Dominic, stepping back and gesturing with my firearm.
“Roman, please…” Dominic begged, dropping to his knees on the damp stone floor. “If you open that door, the federal authorities will trace the original Vance estate assets back to you! You will lose the mansion, the shipping lines, your reputation! Everything you’ve worked twenty years to build will be destroyed!”
“I said open it!” I roared, grabbing him by the collar and throwing him against the heavy steel door.
Dominic’s hands trembled so violently it took him three attempts to set the combination wheel.
Click. Click. Clack.
The heavy locking bar retracted inside the frame with a deep, echoing metallic thud.
Dante stepped forward with two operators, pulling the heavy blast door open. The air that rushed out from the interior room was warm, dry, and smelled faint of lavender soap, old paper, and tea.
The beam of my flashlight revealed a room completely unlike the damp stone tunnels outside.
It was a fully furnished bedroom.
A heavy four-poster mahogany bed sat against the far wall, covered with clean linen sheets. Bookshelves lined two walls, packed with classical literature, history texts, and oil paintings of the Boston skyline. In the corner sat an old wooden desk with an antique brass lamp and a set of leather journals.
Sitting in a high-backed armchair near a small electric heater was a woman.
She wore a long, grey wool dress, her hair completely silver, pinned back neatly into a bun. She looked frail, her skin pale from decades without sunlight, but her eyes—large, sharp, and grey—were unmistakably my own.
She set down a cup of tea she was holding, looking up at the tactical lights flashing in her doorway without blinking.
May you like
She looked past the armed operators, past my uncle Dominic kneeling in horror on the floor, and fixed her gaze entirely on me.
“Romey,” she whispered softly, her voice smooth, gentle, and utterly devoid of fear. “You’ve grown so tall.”
