Chapter 9 - The Chase Through the Drains
The red paint glistened like fresh blood under the flickering emergency lights. I stood frozen in the center of the wrecked hospital room, the breath sucked entirely out of my lungs, my legs trembling so violently I could barely stay upright.
They hadn't come for Ethan. They hadn't come to kill me.
They had taken my mother. The woman who had spent thirty years hiding in the shadows, running from the very monsters who had just walked through the front doors of the estate.
"No..." I choked out, a ragged sob tearing from my throat as I dropped to my knees in the puddle of water on the floor. "No, no, no..."
Dominic appeared beside me in a blur of motion, setting Lily down safely with one of the trusted guards who had followed us down. He stared at the red message on the wall, his jaw clenching with a fury so dark and absolute it felt like the air around him was freezing solid.
"Marcus," Dominic muttered, his voice a lethal hiss. "He didn't want to destroy the syndicate. He wanted to draw us down here so he could extract the one person who knows where Dante hid the original archives."
He dropped to one knee beside me, his strong hands gripping my shoulders, pulling me up to meet his dark, unyielding gaze.
"Listen to me, Anna," he said, his voice urgent, cutting through the haze of my panic. "Your mother is still alive. If they wanted her dead, they would have left her body here. They took her because they need her leverage against us."
"Where would they take her?" I cried, wiping the frantic tears from my face with the back of my hand. "The estate is locked down!"
"Not the estate," Dominic replied, standing up and drawing a fresh magazine from his vest, clicking it firmly into his Beretta. "The old drainage network beneath the city. It connects the lower vaults of this mansion straight to the abandoned industrial district downtown. It's the only blind spot my father built into this property—and Marcus was the only head of security with the blueprints."
He turned to his lead enforcer, who stood holding Lily near the shattered door. "Secure the perimeter. Keep the girl safe in the panic room. If I'm not back by sunrise, trigger the fail-safe protocols."
"Dominic, wait!" I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, my fingers digging into the dark fabric. "I'm coming with you."
He looked down at me, shaking his head instantly. "No. It's too dangerous. You're staying here where it's secure."
"She is my mother!" I shouted, the grief and rage finally breaking through every barrier. "You think I'm going to sit in a bunker while men who want to kill us drag her through the sewers? If you leave without me, I swear to God I will follow you out those doors by myself."
Dominic stared at me for three agonizing seconds. He saw the absolute, unyielding resolve burning in my eyes—the exact same fire he had seen in the cathedral, the same fire my mother had carried for thirty years.
He let out a sharp, resigned breath.
May you like
"Stay behind my shoulder every single second," he commanded, pulling a heavy, suppressed pistol from his spare holster and forcing it into my trembling hands. "And if anyone points a gun at you, you don't hesitate. You pull the trigger."
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