My voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the heavy weight of three years spent rotting in a concrete cage. I pushed past her threshold, the cheap canvas of my duffel bag scraping against the new, brutally expensive hardwood of the foyer.

My father was alive. For six months, while I mourned a ghost at a fake grave, my flesh and blood was trapped under the very roof where he had built his legacy, tortured by the woman he had trusted with his life.

"Show me," I said, my voice dropping into a register so dark and cold that even Mateo flinched.

"It's suicide, Julian," Mateo pleaded, shaking his head. "The building is a fortress now. Patricia hired a private security firm—Apex Global. Armed guards patrol the perimeter 24/7. There are biometric locks, motion sensors, and cameras covering every square inch of the block. If you walk in there, you won't just die—you'll disappear, and no one will ever find your bones."

"Let them try," I growled, clutching my father's heavy gold watch in my pocket. My thumb brushed the back casing. Time is the only thing money can’t buy back.

She had stolen my life. She had stolen my father’s remaining years. And now, she was going to pay with everything.

"Tell me how to get in," I demanded, grabbing Mateo by the shoulders. "You've worked this district for thirty years. You know the city blueprints better than the architects. How do we get under Mendoza Enterprises without setting off their high-tech alarms?"

Mateo stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. He saw the cold, unyielding fire burning in my eyes—the exact same fire his old friend Ricardo Mendoza used to possess when he backed down from no one.

Slowly, a grim, weathered smile touched the corners of Mateo's mouth. He reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy, rusted iron key and a folded, grease-stained blueprint.

"The building was erected in 1984," Mateo muttered, unfolding the paper against the flat of the headstone. "Back then, the city grid used an old steam-tunnel network to heat the downtown district. When they renovated the corporate headquarters last year, Patricia’s contractors sealed off the main access points on the street level. But they didn't touch the drainage junction beneath the old East Alley."

He pointed a calloused finger at a faded ink mark on the blueprint.

"It’s a tight squeeze. You’ll have to crawl through three hundred yards of raw sewage runoff and rusted iron pipes. The water is freezing, the air is thick with methane, and if the security patrol catches you on the thermal monitors down there, they’ll weld the grates shut while you're still inside."

"I spent five years in a concrete box smelling human misery and rotting food," I replied, my voice devoid of fear. "A drainage pipe is a five-star hotel compared to Barrientos prison."

I snatched the blueprint and the iron key from his hand, shoving them into my duffel bag.

"Wait, Julian," Mateo whispered, handing me a heavy, rubber-wrapped tactical flashlight he had hidden under his coat. "Take this. And... be careful. If Ricardo is still breathing down there, he's holding on by a thread. Patricia didn't lock him up to keep him safe; she’s been slowly draining his remaining offshore bank accounts using his own biometric thumbprint. Every day he stays alive down there is a countdown to his execution."