Chapter 13 - The Descent into the Sub-Levels
The address encrypted in the metadata of the text message led them not to a luxury hotel or an abandoned warehouse, but deep beneath the city—to the municipal water management facility, a cavernous maze of concrete tunnels, roaring turbines, and subterranean steam pipes.
Lorenzo and Isabella moved through the damp shadows like twin predators. Bruno padded silently beside them, his nose to the ground, tracking the faint, lingering scent of child-sized sneakers and cold fear.
"Watch the upper gantries," Lorenzo muttered, signaling with a quick hand gesture as they approached a massive central chamber where giant industrial turbines hummed with deafening fury.
In the center of the concrete platform stood a solitary figure tied to an iron pillar. A small, familiar form in a clean cardigan. Emma’s head was slumped forward, unconscious.
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Standing a few yards away, leaning casually against a concrete pillar with a silenced pistol dangling from his hand, was a man wearing an expensive tailored suit that looked entirely out of place in the grime of the sewers. He turned as their boots crunched on the gravel.
"Lorenzo Duca. And the ghost of the family tree," the man smiled, his teeth gleaming white in the dim light. "I am Viktor’s older brother, Julian. You thought cutting off one head of the serpent would kill the beast? We are the beast."
