Chapter 1 - The Descent into the Ice
The ballroom music thumped through the heavy oak doors, a muffled, mocking reminder of the warmth just feet away. Inside the walk-in freezer, the cold was an entity in itself—a living, biting force that tore through velvet and wool, eating straight into the marrow of young bones.
"Leo, I can't feel my fingers," Mia whispered, her voice a fragile reed snapping in the dark.
Leo pulled his sister closer, wrapping his small, shivering arms around her. He was only six, but sitting here in the pitch black while the woman with the diamond eyes turned the heavy exterior latch had aged him a lifetime. He remembered the sound of the lock clicking into place. He remembered Isabella’s voice, cold as the frost creeping up the steel walls. "If you scream, no one will hear you. The meat doesn't care."
Outside, the party swelled. Glasses clinked to the health of Lorenzo Moretti and his radiant bride. But upstairs in the shadows of the service corridor, Elra Vance couldn't shake the pit forming in her stomach. Isabella Thorne’s parting threat still rang in her ears, but it wasn't the threat against herself that haunted her. It was the absolute, hollow terror she had seen in Leo’s eyes before they fled up the stairs.
She looked around the service hallway. Empty. The catering staff was busy clearing the appetizer trays. Slipping past the pantry, Elra climbed the grand staircase, her soft-soled service shoes making no sound against the Persian runner.
She checked the nursery. Empty. The beds were unmade, toys scattered, but no children.
"Leo? Mia?" she called out softly, her voice barely a breath.
No answer. She checked the guest wing, the library, the long, winding corridors of the third floor. Nothing. Panic, cold and sharp, began to pool in her chest. She remembered Isabella’s venomous warning: Unwanted, heavy baggage.
With a growing sense of dread, Elra abandoned the upper floors and headed down toward the massive commercial kitchens on the ground level. The kitchens were deserted, the chefs and sous-chefs gathered around a television in the breakroom, watching the gala stream.
As Elra crossed the stainless-steel floor toward the exit, a faint, rhythmic sound caught her ear.
Scratch. Tap. Scratch.
She froze, holding her breath.
It was coming from the walk-in freezer tucked away in the far corner, half-hidden behind a rolling rack of industrial sheet pans. The heavy steel door was shut tight.
Elra rushed across the room, her hand landing on the heavy metal handle. She pulled. It wouldn't budge. The external deadbolt—a safety measure for idiots or a weapon for monsters—was thrown into the locked position.
"Is someone in there?!" Elra cried out, throwing her weight against the door.
From the other side came a weak, muffled sob. "Help... it's too cold..."
Elra’s blood ran ice-cold. She grabbed a heavy steel meat mallet hanging from the nearby prep rack and jammed the iron head into the latch mechanism, hammering it with all her strength. Once. Twice. The heavy iron gave a sickening screech, the lock snapping under the brute force.
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The door flew open.
A billowing cloud of white frost spilled out into the warm kitchen. And there, huddled in the dark among the hanging sides of beef, were Leo and Mia, blue-lipped, trembling violently, and barely conscious.
