Chapter 5 - THE SKELETON ON THE FLOORThe air in the sub-basement was dead, thick with the smell of mold, antiseptic, and old blood.
I scrambled to my feet, switching on the tactical flashlight and sweeping the bright beam across the massive, cavernous room. It was an old maintenance storage vault that had been illegally converted into a makeshift underground prison cell.
Thick steel bars had been welded across the arched entryways. Heavy electronic surveillance cameras blinked red in the corners of the ceiling, though their wires had been carelessly spliced and bypassed—Patricia wanted her prisoner hidden, even from her own security contractors.
In the far corner of the stone cell, curled into a pathetic, shivering ball on a dirty mattress, was a man.
He was wearing a tattered, blood-stained hospital gown. His hair, once a distinguished silver-grey, was now a matted, yellowed white that hung down past his hollow cheeks. His ribs jutted out beneath his translucent skin like the bars of a cage.
"Dad?" I whispered, my voice breaking completely as I dropped the flashlight and rushed toward the iron bars.
The old man didn't move. He didn't even flinch. He let out another shallow, rattling breath, his eyes staring blankly at the damp concrete floor.
"Dad! It's me. It's Julian."
At the sound of my name, the man’s body seized violently. A tremor rolled through his skeletal frame. Slowly, painfully, like rusted clockwork, he lifted his head.
When the beam of light caught his face, I had to clap a hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming.
His left eye was swollen shut, surrounded by a deep, purple-black hematoma. His lips were split and crusted with dried blood. But those eyes—those piercing, intelligent hazel eyes that had raised me, taught me integrity, and looked at me with pride—were still there, burning with a faint, stubborn spark of life.
"Ju... Julian?" His voice was a dry, cracking rasp, barely audible over the hum of the generators. "My... my boy? Am I... am I dead? Did the angels send you to take me?"
"No, Dad, you're not dead. And I'm real. I'm right here," I sobbed, wrapping my hands around the cold iron bars, trying desperately to reach him. "I'm out of prison. I'm back."
Ricardo Mendoza blinked sluggishly, tears finally breaking free from his swollen eyelids and tracking down his hollow, sunken cheeks. He raised a hand that looked like dry twigs bound together by skin, pressing his trembling palm against the iron bars, directly opposite mine.
"You... you fool," he rasped, a weak, heartbroken cough shaking his entire body. "Why did you come back? Patricia... Patricia knows you're out. She’s... she’s watching you. This whole building... it's a trap."
"I don't care about her trap," I growled, looking around wildly for a way to break the heavy iron padlock securing the cell door. "Where is the key? Did she leave a guard down here?"
"No... no guards at night," Ricardo whispered, his breath hitching as he clutched his chest in pain. "She... she comes down here herself. Every Friday at midnight. She... she brings a portable biometric scanner. She forces my thumbprint onto the transfer terminals to drain the last of the Cayman accounts. If... if I refuse, she... she beats me."
My blood boiled so hot I thought my skin was going to blister off my bones. Every molecule of air in my body turned to poison.
Every Friday at midnight.
Today was Friday.
I checked the cheap digital watch on my wrist. It was 11:45 PM.
May you like
Fifteen minutes.
Patricia was coming down here in fifteen minutes to torture my father one last time, completely unaware that the ghost she thought she had buried forever was waiting in the dark to collect his debt.
