Chapter 3 - THE LAUNDRY ROOM TUNNEL
The air beneath Rowan Manor smelled of old concrete, damp stone, and seventy years of forgotten family history.
Mara moved through the narrow brick corridor beneath the laundry facility with total familiarity, her flashlight beam cutting a sharp path through the darkness. Dominic followed three paces behind, his gun raised, while Victor brought up the rear, his eyes scanning the pipe-lined ceiling above.
“You’ve been down here before,” Dominic said, his shoes stepping over a rusted iron drainage grate.
“I spent six weeks clearing the dry rot out of these foundation walls when I took the job,” Mara replied without slowing down. “Your estate manager thought he was paying me forty dollars an hour to mop concrete. I was actually mapping your escape routes.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “Who hired you, Mara? And don't tell me you found out about my brother by reading old newspapers.”
Mara stopped at a heavy iron door sealed with a triple-bolt padlock.
She reached into her uniform apron pocket, pulled out a small leather case, and unfolded two thin steel lock-picking tools. Within nine seconds, the internal tumblers let out three distinct clicks, and the heavy iron door swung open on oiled hinges.
“I wasn't hired by an enemy, Dominic,” Mara said, stepping into a low-ceilinged vault lined with wooden crates dating back to Prohibition. “I was hired by your mother.”
Dominic froze. The cold air in the tunnel suddenly felt suffocating.
“My mother died when I was twelve,” Dominic said, his tone dropping into a deadly whisper.
“Sophia Vale didn't die of cancer in a private clinic in Zurich, Dominic,” Mara said, turning around to face him, the flashlight illuminating the hard, uncompromising lines of her face. “She was placed in a medical asylum in Maine because she discovered that Marcus had lied to her about Elena and Daniel. She spent twenty years trying to find a way to get the truth to you before Marcus’s loyalists could kill her.”
Dominic’s breathing turned shallow.
The woman he had mourned for twenty-five years—the gentle, soft-spoken mother whose portrait hung in the grand library—had been locked away by the same man who wore the patriarch’s ring currently sitting on Dominic’s pinky finger.
“My mother is alive?” Dominic asked, his voice cracking for the first time in his adult life.
“She died six months ago,” Mara said softly, her eyes reflecting a profound, quiet sorrow. “I was her nurse during her final two years. Before she passed, she made me promise two things: that I would find Daniel, and that I would bring you the truth before Daniel destroyed you.”
A heavy explosion shook the concrete ceiling above them, sending a shower of fine dust down onto their shoulders.
“They’re blowing the vault doors in the main house,” Victor called out from the doorway, his radio crackling with static. “Boss, we have less than three minutes before they find the laundry hatch.”
Dominic took a slow, deep breath, forcing the violent storm of emotions inside his chest back down into the dark vault of his mind. He looked at Mara.
“Where is Daniel now?” Dominic asked.
“He’s the man who hired those shooters,” Mara said, pointing up toward the ceiling. “He came to take your father’s empire back. He believes you were part of the cover-up. He thinks you knew about him all along and let Marcus lock his mother away.”
Dominic’s eyes flared with a dark, predatory light.
“Then my brother is about to learn that our father kept secrets from both of us,” Dominic said, racking the slide of his Sig Sauer. “Victor, open the carriage house hatch. We aren't running away from this house.”
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“Sir?” Victor asked, startled.
“We’re going to the west wing,” Dominic said, turning back toward the stairs. “If my brother wants a war over Marcus Vale’s legacy, I’m going to give him the throne room.”
