Chapter 5 - The Shadow of Eleanor
"No," Magnus said, pulling Lottie into his arms as he stood up. "We don't split up."
"Magnus, don't be an idiot!" Sabina snapped, reaching into the pocket of her silk dress and pulling out a small, compact silver device with a red toggle switch. "This room is a dead end. I have two thermite charges set on the gallery support pillars. If I detonate them, the floor drops into the dining room below, cutting off their advance."
Magnus stared at her. "You rigged my house with thermite?"
"I rigged your house three months ago when I realized your uncle Arthur was buying unregistered weapons on the black market!" she shouted back, her patience evaporating. "Now move your daughter into the closet before I detonate this floor with you on it!"
Magnus looked at the silver toggle switch in her hand, then at his daughter clinging to his neck.
"Master closet. Three seconds," Magnus gritted out.
He sprinted into the adjoining master suite, kicked open the walk-in closet door, and threw open the brass panel covering the commercial laundry chute. The dark shaft dropped twenty feet down into the padded linen collection bin in the sub-basement.
"Lottie, listen to me," Magnus said rapidly, setting the girl on the edge of the chute. "Slide down. Mrs. Gable is waiting in the safe room at the bottom. Lock the steel door behind you. Do not open it until you hear my voice."
"Daddy, come with me!" Lottie cried, her tiny fingers digging into his lapels.
"I’m right behind you, baby. Go!"
He gently nudged her into the chute. She slid down into the darkness with a small, muffled shriek, followed a moment later by a dull THUD as she landed safely in the linen bin twenty feet below.
Magnus turned back to the bedroom just as Sabina backed through the door, holding her weapon with two hands, her eyes locked on the hallway.
"They're at the door!" she barked.
"Detonate it!" Magnus ordered, raising his gun to cover the doorway.
Sabina flipped the red cover on the toggle switch and slammed her thumb down.
BOOM-BOOM.
A blinding white flash erupted in the hallway outside, followed by a terrifying, roaring screech of tearing steel and crumbling masonry. The entire east wing shook violently as the structural support beams melted instantly under six thousand degrees of thermite heat.
The center section of the gallery floor collapsed with a thunderous roar, sending tons of marble, timber, and three shouting mercenaries plummeting twenty feet down into the ground-floor dining room in a cascade of fire and dust.
The dust cloud billowed into the bedroom, thick, hot, and smelling of burnt iron.
Sabina lowered her device, coughing softly, her cream dress now covered in grey plaster dust. "That... should buy us a few minutes."
Magnus stepped through the dust, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her back into the master closet. "Into the chute. Now."
Sabina didn't argue. She slipped into the shaft, sliding down into the gloom without a sound. Magnus checked the hallway one last time—seeing only a yawning, fiery pit where his gallery had been—then threw himself into the chute after her.
He dropped twenty feet, landing heavily in the soft mountain of towels and sheets in the sub-basement linen room.
Sabina was already on her feet, standing near the heavy steel blast door of the basement safe room.
Beside her, Mrs. Gable—the family's elderly housekeeper—was holding Lottie tightly, comforting the weeping child.
Magnus scrambled out of the bin, rushing to the safe room door. He punched a six-digit code into the digital keypad, grabbed the heavy chrome wheel, and spun it counterclockwise.
The six-inch-thick steel door swung open with a heavy, pneumatic hiss.
"Inside. Everyone," Magnus ordered.
Mrs. Gable led Lottie into the reinforced, self-contained bunker.
Sabina moved to follow, but Magnus caught her arm at the threshold, holding her back in the dim light of the sub-basement.
"You mentioned Eleanor," Magnus said, his voice deadly quiet, his eyes searching her face. "You said you promised my wife you would protect Lottie. Eleanor died four years ago. You didn't enter my life until two years ago."
Sabina pulled her arm gently out of his grip. She reached into the neck of her dress and pulled out a thin silver chain that had been hidden beneath her collar.
Hanging from the chain was a small, scratched steel locket.
She opened it and held it out toward him.
Inside was a photograph of two young women standing on a sailboat in Italy, smiling brightly into the sun.
One was Eleanor.
May you like
The other, younger, with dark hair before it had been dyed blonde, was Sabina.
"Eleanor was my sister, Magnus," Sabina said softly, her voice finally breaking with a deep, tragic grief. "And you married her without ever knowing who her family really was."
