Chapter 6 - The Glass Fortress
“What did you do?!” the mercenary roared in the pitch-black darkness, his tactical light snapping on and wildly stabbing through the gloom.
“Kill the alarm!” Vivian shrieked, all pretense of aristocratic composure shattering into hysterical venom. “Find the override!”
“The doors are down! It’s an automated lock-down!” the second guard shouted from forty feet away.
Ava didn’t hesitate. She had memorized every brick of this floor as a ten-year-old playing hide-and-seek. In total darkness, while the men were blinded by the sudden transition and disoriented by their narrow flashlight beams, Ava moved silently along the damp stone wall.
She reached the secondary mechanical panel set into the foundation pillar. Grace’s brass key slid smoothly into the manual valve. Ava turned it ninety degrees to the right.
Instead of venting Halon into the entire basement, the system rerouted the high-pressure gas directly through the eastern exhaust vent—straight into the mercenary’s sector.
With a deafening roar of pressurized gas, a cloud of opaque, freezing vapor flooded the corridor where the two guards stood.
“Can't—can't breathe!” one yelled, the sound turning into a choked, violent coughing fit as the displaced oxygen starved his lungs. Heavy metallic thuds followed as their weapons clattered to the stone floor, the men frantically beating their fists against the reinforced steel fire doors that had locked them into the wine tasting salon.
Vivian, however, was not in that sector.
A beam of light sliced through the darkness from behind Ava, catching her silhouette against the mechanical panel.
“Don’t move,” Vivian whispered.
Ava turned slowly, shielding Lily with her body.
Vivian stood ten feet away. Her hair was disheveled, a smudge of black grease across her cheekbone, but her silver pistol was leveled directly at Ava’s chest. The red laser dot danced across the fleece blanket covering Lily.
“You little bitch,” Vivian breathed, her chest heaving as she fought the thinning air. “You think you’re as clever as your mother? Grace thought she was untouchable, too.”
“You killed her,” Ava said, her voice steady, loud enough to register on the digital recorder pinned inside her own jacket pocket. “You poisoned my father, and you drowned my mother in the lake.”
Vivian let out a dry, chilling laugh. “Your mother was an obstacle. Just like your father became an obstacle. Richard is a sentimental fool who spent eighteen months crying over a woman who was already turning to dust. He was going to give you everything, Ava. *Everything.* Millions in trusts, corporate seats, the real estate—while I was expected to live off a discretionary allowance like an unpaid housekeeper!”
“So you pushed a three-year-old into a pool?” Ava said, stepping forward an inch, feeling the cold weight of the cellar air pressing down. “You couldn't even look her in the eye.”
“I didn't want to waste a bullet on a toddler,” Vivian spat, her finger tightening on the trigger. “A wet pool deck, a tragic slip, an older sister who panicked and locked the emergency doors in a frenzy… it was poetic. But now? Now the police will find Marcus broke in, stole the grandfather’s shotgun, killed you both in a botched kidnapping, and I was forced to defend myself.”
Vivian raised the gun to eye level.
“Happy eighteenth birthday, Ava.”
Before Vivian could pull the trigger, Lily stirred against Ava’s chest. The toddler opened her fever-glazed eyes, looked directly into the flashlight beam, and pressed the bright red purge valve on her own oxygen canister—a game Ava had taught her during their nebulizer treatments.
A screaming jet of pure, pressurized medical oxygen blasted straight out of the relief valve, carrying with it a cloud of dry, caustic fire-retardant powder Marcus had packed into the nozzle.
The blinding white cloud struck Vivian squarely in the eyes.
Vivian shrieked in agony, dropping the flashlight. The gun discharged with an ear-splitting crack, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly off the vaulted stone ceiling and showering them with brick dust.
Ava surged forward. She didn't use a fist; she slammed her entire body weight, fueled by two years of grief and sheer survival instinct, into Vivian’s chest.
Vivian crashed backward onto the damp cobblestones, the gun skittering across the floor and vanishing into the darkness between the wine casks.
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Ava didn't stop to fight. She seized the dropped flashlight, scooped Lily tighter into her arms, and bolted through the open service corridor toward the mansion’s ground-floor conservatory.
***
