Chapter 26: The safe room
Upstairs, inside the master bedroom, the heavy sirens were terrifyingly loud.
Isabella was standing near the foot of the bed, her hands clutching the fabric of her coat. She couldn’t see the red lights flashing against the walls, but she could feel the vibration of the alarm humming through the wooden floorboards.
Shouting voices echoed from the hallways outside, followed by the heavy, thudding sounds of boots running back and forth.
’What is happening?’ she thought, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps.
Did Kian come back? Did the police show up? Or...
A faint, crazy thought sparked in the back of her mind. ’Aaron?’
She tried to push the hope down before it could swallow her whole. Hoping only brought more pain.
But her body shook with raw nervous energy as the lock on the heavy oak door clicked violently, and the door swung open.
"Madam Isabella," Luke’s voice was sharp and hurried as he stepped into the room. He took her arm, his grip firm but careful. "We need to move. Now."
"Luke? What’s going on?" she asked, her voice trembling as he guided her quickly out into the hallway. "Who is out there?"
"Just keep moving," Luke said, leading her down the quiet service corridor behind the main stairs. "We have an intrusion. I’m taking you to the safe room until the local forces respond."
Isabella followed him, her slippers dragging slightly against the cold floor.
The safe room. She remembered her father talking about it years ago. It was a massive steel box built behind the study’s fake bookcase, protected by thick reinforced doors and a digital pin pad.
Once the door shut from the outside, nothing short of a military charge could open it.
If Luke locked her in there, she would be trapped all over again.
They reached the end of the corridor. Luke punched a quick six-digit code into a concealed panel beside a heavy wooden door.
The panel beeped, and the wall slid open with a heavy mechanical groan, revealing the small, stainless-steel room inside.
"Get inside, Madam," Luke said, standing by the entrance while two guards took positions in the hallway behind him. "You’ll be safe here."
Isabella stepped over the metal threshold. The air inside smelled of stale air and clean metal.
"Luke, wait—"
"Stay quiet," Luke said softly, pressing the panel on the outside wall. "I’ll come back for you when it’s clear."
The heavy steel door slid shut with a deep, echoing ’THUD’. The locks engaged, three iron bolts driving into the frame with heavy metallic clicks. Then, complete silence.
The sirens outside were instantly cut off. The safe room was entirely soundproof.
Isabella stood alone in the dark room, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She reached out, her fingers touching the cold, smooth steel of the closed door. It was solid. No handles. No buttons on the inside.
She was trapped again. Kian was going to come back, he would take her to the island, and she would spend the rest of her life locked in a warm, sunny prison where no one would ever find her.
"No," she whispered to the empty room. "No."
She turned around, her hands reaching out into the dark space.
Her father had built this house. Before Kian remodeled the upper floors with dark modern furniture, her family had lived here for generations.
When she was ten years old, long before she lost her sight, her father used to play hide-and-seek with her in the old lower rooms. He had shown her things he didn’t even tell the estate staff about.
’The original foundation,’ she remembered, her mind racing back through years of hazy memories. ’The house was built over an old estate cellar.’
Isabella began shuffling her feet across the concrete floor, her hands dragging along the wall. She counted her steps out loud.
"One... two... three..."
Her fingers brushed past smooth metal plates, moving toward the far back corner where the ventilation shafts were hidden.
She reached the back wall, feeling down near the baseboards. Her nails dug into the damp seam between the metal wall and the old stone work behind it.
Her father had fought the contractors to leave the old escape hatch intact. He had called it an old family eccentricity.
She dropped to her knees, her coat dragging on the dusty floor. Her hands searched frantically, pressing against the cold surface until her thumb caught on a small, raised brass latch hidden beneath a heavy metal flap.
It was stiff with age. Isabella gritted her teeth, using both hands to pull down on the lever with all the weight of her small body.
’CLACK.’
A narrow section of the back wall swung inward, releasing a wave of cold, earthy air that smelled of damp stone and old moss.
Isabella gasped, ducking her head as the draft blew her hair across her face.
She couldn’t see the passage, but she didn’t need to.
The tunnel was pitch black anyway. For the first time since the accident, her blindness wasn’t a handicap, she was used to moving through the blur.
She leaned forward, crawling on her hands and knees through the narrow opening, pulling her coat tight around herself.
Once her feet cleared the frame, she reached back and pulled the heavy brass lever from the inside, letting the stone hatch click back into place.
The sound of her own fast breathing echoed in the narrow space.
She stood up slowly, her hands reaching out to feel the rough, unhewn stone walls on either side. The air was freezing, dripping with moisture.
’Left at the split,’ she remembered her father’s voice, clear and warm in her mind. ’Then twenty-two steps down the incline to the old carriage tunnel.’
Isabella took a deep breath, wrapped her coat around herself, and started walking forward into the dark.
Outside the safe room, the hallway was a mess of gunfire and shouting.
Miller and Jackson pushed through the side stairs, exchanging shots with four of Kingston’s guards who had taken cover behind the marble pillars.
The estate guards were good, but Aaron’s men moved like wolves, flanking the hallway from two sides and forcing the guards to retreat down the main stairs.