Chapter 4 - The Secrets Beneath the Floorboards**
The air down in the sub-basement tunnels was thick, stale, and smelled of damp earth and cheap stale tobacco.
My flashlight beam cut through the absolute darkness, bouncing off exposed brick walls, rusted steam pipes, and miles of bundled communication cables. The old Prohibition tunnels spanned hundreds of yards beneath the Long Island property, originally built to smuggle contraband off the coastline and connect to the old estate’s carriage houses.
When the modern mansion was built over the historic footprint, the architects were supposed to have sealed these lower access points permanently with reinforced concrete.
As I walked deeper into the labyrinth, the beam of my flashlight caught something that made my blood run cold.
A fresh cigarette butt lying on a concrete ledge.
Still damp at the filter.
Someone had been standing here not ten minutes ago. Listening to us. Hearing every single word we said in the kitchen upstairs.
“Show yourself!” I shouted, my voice echoing off the concrete vault with terrifying resonance. “I know you’re down here! Come out and face me, you coward!”
Only the low, dripping sound of condensation answered me.
I pushed forward, sweeping my gun and flashlight from side to side, my heart hammering a violent rhythm against my ribs. The tunnel sloped upward, leading toward the foundation of the old nineteenth-century manor house in the abandoned west wing.
Ahead of me stood a heavy fire door—the exact one that was supposed to be dead-bolted from the main house side.
The heavy steel bolt had been filed down from the inside.
I pushed the door open with the barrel of my gun. It swung inward with a slow, agonizing squeak.
I stepped into a large, windowless subterranean room that had been converted into a crude, terrifying living space. An unmade military cot sat in the corner. Piles of empty canned goods, bottled water, and fast-food wrappers littered a folding card table.
But it was the wall directly across from the cot that made my breath seize in my throat.
It was covered entirely in photographs.
Hundreds of them.
Polaroids, newspaper clippings, candid printouts, and surveillance stills. All of them featuring my family.
There were photos of Isabelle walking out of the Garden City preschool on the day she was murdered. There were telephoto lens shots of Olivia playing soccer in the back garden. There were night-vision close-ups of Sophie sleeping in her bed.
And right in the center of the gruesome collage, pinned with a bloody hunting knife, was a photograph of me stepping out of my office in Manhattan, dated yesterday.
“Impressive, isn't it?”
A smooth, chilling voice echoed from the shadows behind the doorway.
I spun around instantly, raising the Sig Sauer, my finger tightening against the trigger.
Standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the doorframe with a suppressed pistol dangling loosely from his right hand, was a man I recognized instantly.
Marcus Vance.
My former head of corporate security. The man I had personally trusted with my family’s safety for five years. The man who had organized the police response the day Isabelle was killed, shedding fake tears and swearing he would hunt down her killer to the ends of the earth.
“Marcus,” I whispered, the name tasting like ash and poison in my mouth.
May you like
Marcus smiled, a sickening, arrogant grin that stretched across his scarred face. He was wearing dark tactical gear, looking entirely calm, entirely at home in the abyss.
“Hello, boss,” Marcus said smoothly. “You know, you really should invest in better acoustic insulation for that kitchen. Your daughters have lovely singing voices, Dominic. It’s a shame you almost ruined the performance.”
