Chapter 4 - THE COLLAPSE OF THE EAST WINGThe floor beneath us shuddered with a sickening boom.
A secondary explosion ripped through the ceiling of the hidden passage, sending a cascade of ancient timber, plaster, and choking gray dust raining down upon us.
"Move! Move! Move!" I shouted, tackling Ethan sideways just as a massive oak beam crashed down precisely where he had been standing a second before.
The force of the blast threw Tyler backward into the secondary corridor.
"Tyler!" Ethan roared, trying to crawl through the rubble, but I grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him upright.
"If we stay here, we get buried alive! Look at the wiring—the whole east wing is rigged!"
Flames were already licking up the wooden walls of the passage, feeding on decades-old varnish and insulation. The air turned thick with smoke, burning our lungs and blinding us with stinging ash.
Marcus was gone, swallowed by the smoke and the secondary tunnel system that led down toward the wine cellar.
"We have to get to your father's study," I coughed, wiping soot from my eyes as I kept my pistol raised, scanning the smoke for any movement. "That’s the only reinforced panic room in this sector."
"My father... my father was in the dining room with Aunt Beatrice!" Ethan panicked, his usual stoic composure completely shattering. "We left them down there!"
"Your father doesn't need saving, Ethan. He's Grant Blackwood," I said sharply, grabbing his wrist and dragging him through the thickening haze. "Right now, we need to survive long enough to find out who else in this house is wearing a wire."
We burst through a cracked wall panel that opened directly into the east wing guest bedroom. The room was empty, but the balcony doors were blown wide open, letting in the cold night wind and the flashing red and blue lights of distant sirens.
Wait. Sirens?
We hadn't called the police. Grant Blackwood’s estate operated entirely outside the law. Local law enforcement wouldn't dare approach these gates without a direct invitation—unless someone inside the house had triggered a silent federal distress beacon.
And looking at the computer terminal glowing green on the mahogany desk across the room, someone definitely had.
A document was open on the screen, auto-uploading files to an encrypted external server.
The title of the folder: Project Exodus: Blackwood Assets & Off-Shore Accounts.
Ethan stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the screen. His face went completely white.
"That's not Marcus's work," Ethan whispered, his voice trembling worse than Tyler's had. "Marcus doesn't know code. He's muscle."
"Then who does?" I demanded.
A soft, elegant click came from the doorway behind us.
We turned slowly.
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Standing in the frame, bathed in the red glow of the fire alarm strobes, was Grant’s silver-haired sister, Beatrice. In her right hand, she held a sleek, silenced Walther PPK. In her left, she held a steaming porcelain teacup, looking as calm as if she were waiting for the morning paper.
"Oh, children," Beatrice sighed softly, taking a delicate sip of her tea. "You really should have stayed in the dining room. The dessert was dying to be eaten."
