Chapter 10 — Buried Alive
Chapter 10 — Buried Alive
The gas smelled faintly sweet.
Noah covered Emma’s mouth with his sleeve.
“Carbon monoxide mixed with a sedative,” he said. “We have minutes.”
Gideon struck the sealed door with his cane.
“Raymond! Open this!”
Raymond laughed through the speaker.
“You gave orders for thirty years, Gideon. It must feel strange when no one listens.”
Victoria searched the walls.
“There was an emergency ventilation system.”
“This archive was built before the plant closed,” Noah said. “The controls may be mechanical.”
Evelyn handed Emma to Victoria.
“Stay low.”
She and Noah moved toward the rear shelves.
Margaret’s video had mentioned protection.
Evelyn remembered something her mother used to say whenever the girls hid during childhood games.
Every room built by frightened men has two exits.
Behind the steel drawer containing the tape, Evelyn found a narrow lever.
She pulled it.
A section of shelving released.
Beyond it was a maintenance tunnel.
“Move!”
They entered one by one.
Gideon struggled.
Noah and Evelyn pulled him through before the shelf closed.
The tunnel descended beneath the plant.
Emma clung to Victoria’s neck.
For the first time since the gala, Victoria held the child with tenderness.
“You’re safe,” she whispered.
Emma looked at her bruised wrist.
“Why were you mean to me?”
Victoria stumbled.
There were a thousand excuses available to her.
Stress.
Pride.
Ignorance.
Habit.
She used none.
“Because I was cruel.”
“Why?”
Victoria’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because sometimes people who are hurt decide hurting someone smaller makes them feel powerful.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
They reached an underground pumping station.
A ladder led to the surface, but the hatch above had been welded shut.
Noah found an old drainage map.
The tunnel continued beneath the eastern waste field and exited near the river.
They walked through ankle-deep water.
Gideon fell twice.
The second time, Evelyn almost left him.
Then Emma turned back.
“Grandpa needs help.”
The title struck everyone.
Emma had accepted the relationship more easily than the adults.
Evelyn lifted Gideon’s arm over her shoulder.
“You don’t deserve this.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
They emerged near the river twenty minutes later.
Federal units surrounded the plant, but Raymond had escaped during the confusion.
Marcus Bell, under guard, claimed he knew nothing about the gas system.
Raymond had been acting independently.
A national manhunt began.
Victoria demanded to know why Gideon protected Raymond after learning he fathered Nathan.
Gideon sat inside an ambulance with oxygen beneath his nose.
“Your mother came to me with suspicions, not proof.”
“You paid her doctor.”
“To protect the family from scandal.”
“You protected the man who assaulted me.”
Evelyn looked sharply at Victoria.
Victoria’s face collapsed.
The affair with Raymond had not been consensual.
He had cornered her after a company party when she was intoxicated.
She told no one until the pregnancy became impossible to hide.
Gideon arranged the secret birth.
Then he told Victoria the child had died.
“Raymond later revealed Nathan was alive,” Victoria said. “He threatened to expose everything if I spoke.”
Gideon lowered his eyes.
“You were protecting the company,” she whispered. “Not me.”
“I believed silence would spare you.”
“No. Silence spared you.”
Nathan had grown up believing his mother abandoned him and Thomas Reed was his murdered father.
Raymond shaped every part of that story.
He taught Nathan that Eleanor caused the scandal.
That Victoria chose wealth over motherhood.
That Gideon stole the Ashford empire from people like them.
Some of it was true.
Enough truth to make the lies stronger.
Evelyn received a call from an unknown number.
Nathan’s voice came through.
“I saw the video.”
“How?”
“My father sent it to me.”
“Raymond is not your father in any way that matters.”
“He raised me.”
“He used you.”
Nathan’s breathing was unsteady.
“Is Victoria there?”
“Yes.”
“Put her on.”
Victoria took the phone.
“Nathan?”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Would you have kept me if you knew who my father was?”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
Evelyn stared at her.
Nathan went silent.
It was the worst possible answer.
But perhaps the first honest one Victoria had given him.
“I spent my life imagining you regretted losing me,” Nathan said. “Now I know you were relieved.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
The line disconnected.
A text arrived moments later.
A live video.
Raymond sat inside a dark room.
Beside him was Adrian, Victoria’s younger son, bound to a chair.
Raymond held a knife against Adrian’s throat.
He looked into the camera.
“One son was raised in silk. The other was raised in ashes.”
May you like
Then he smiled.
“Victoria gets to decide which one survives.”
