Chapter 8 - The Underground Escape"Who... who are you really?" I stammered, staring at the frail, elderly woman who had just emerged from a secret floor panel in a locked guest house.
"I am the keeper of the Sterling family's deepest sins," Aunt Beatrice whispered, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength. Her skin felt like parchment, but her grip was iron. "Richard Sterling locked me down in the servant quarters beneath the estate thirty years ago when I tried to expose what he did to Arthur. They left me to rot, but I found the old maintenance tunnels. I know every brick, every pipe, and every dirty secret of this house."
"My daughter, Lily," I pleaded, tears spilling over my lashes. "They have her in the main house. We have to get her out."
Beatrice’s eyes flashed with fierce determination. "I know where Eleanor keeps the children's wing. But we have to be silent. The guards patrol the corridors every ten minutes. Follow me, and don't make a single sound."
She turned and slipped back down into the dark brick tunnel. I didn't hesitate for a second. I dropped down after her, pulling the wooden floor panel back into place just enough to hide the opening from casual view.
The tunnel was pitch black, lit only by the tiny flashlight beam from my phone, which I kept dimmed to the lowest setting. We crept through the damp subterranean labyrinth for what felt like hours, the smell of earth and rotting timber growing stronger with every step.
Finally, Beatrice stopped in front of a rusted iron grate set high into the brick wall. She reached up, pushing the grate outward with a soft metallic click.
"Through here," she whispered. "This leads directly into the ground-floor pantry of the main house. From there, the service stairs go straight up to the nursery."
I squeezed through the narrow opening, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. We emerged into the cavernous, ice-cold darkness of the mansion’s industrial kitchen. The moonlight cut through the high windows, casting long, eerie shadows across rows of stainless steel counters and hanging copper pots.
We crept silently toward the service staircase, our footsteps muffled by the thick Persian runners lining the grand hallways. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like a gunshot in the dead silence of the night.
We reached the second-floor landing, turning down the hallway toward Lily’s bedroom.
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My breath caught in my throat. Standing directly outside Lily’s bedroom door, leaning casually against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, was Julian.
He wasn't sleeping. He was waiting.
