THE NINTH BALLOT

The smoke was acidic, burning my throat instantly.

“Get back!” Adrian shouted. He didn’t waste time on the electronic keypad. He raised his weapon and fired three deafening shots directly into the locking mechanism.

Sparks showered the stone floor, but the heavy steel door didn't budge. The deadbolt was jammed shut.

Victor coughed violently, grabbing a heavy brass bookend from the floor. He swung it like a sledgehammer against the reinforced glass window of the door. It barely left a scratch.

“The vents!” Victor yelled over the alarm klaxons that began to wail in the hallway outside. “Block the vents!”

I dropped to my knees, scrambling through the scattered documents. I grabbed an armful of thick leather binders and shoved them up toward the ceiling grate where the smoke was billowing in. Adrian caught on immediately. He hoisted me up by the waist so I could reach, and I jammed the thick leather covers into the iron slats, severely choking off the flow of smoke.

But the room was already filled with a toxic haze.

“We have minutes before the oxygen is gone,” Adrian choked out, wiping his watering eyes.

Victor dropped to the floor, feeling along the baseboards. “My father built this room to protect family secrets. There’s a manual override for the fire suppression system. A fail-safe.”

“Where?” I gasped, my lungs screaming.

“Behind the central shelf,” Victor said, throwing his weight against the massive steel shelving unit. It didn't move. It was bolted to the floor.

I fell to my hands and knees, shining my phone’s flashlight under the bottom rack. The space was barely ten inches high.

“I can fit,” I said, not waiting for permission. I shimmied under the cold metal shelf, my apron catching on the bolts. The smoke was slightly thinner down here, but it was still blinding.

At the back wall, behind the shelf, my fingers brushed a heavy iron lever. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled with all my strength.

It didn't give.

“Pull, Anna!” Adrian’s voice was muffled and distant.

I braced my feet against the metal struts and threw my entire body weight backward. The lever groaned, then snapped downward with a loud crack.

Instantly, the ceiling sprinklers engaged. Not with water, but with a sudden, violent hiss of Halon gas and dry chemical foam that smothered the smoke. The heavy electronic lock on the door released with a loud beep, defaulting to an open state for fire evacuation.

Adrian kicked the door open. We all spilled out into the hallway, collapsing onto the cool tile, gasping for fresh air.

Victor was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, his white shirt ruined. He looked at Adrian. “Whoever locked us in there wanted us both dead.”

Adrian wiped soot from his face. “We need to find Ellis. And we need to find out what was under that warehouse.”

“I know someone who might know,” I coughed, sitting up. Both men looked at me. “The laundry worker downstairs. Maria. Her husband was the one who was paralyzed in the collapse.”

Ten minutes later, washed and breathing normally, I led Adrian through the labyrinth of the servant's quarters. We found Maria in the basement ironing room, standing over a steaming press. She looked terrified when she saw the head of the family walk in.

“Leave us, please,” Adrian told the other two maids. They scrambled out.

Maria gripped the edge of the ironing board. “Mr. Bellandi. I swear I haven’t spoken to the lawyers since we signed the settlement.”

“I’m not here about the settlement, Maria,” Adrian said gently. “I need the truth. Your husband was a foreman. Why was his team on the loading floor that night, forty-eight hours after the engineer warned it was unsafe?”

Maria looked at me, then at Adrian. Her eyes filled with tears. “Because he was ordered to go back in.”

“I gave the order to delay the closure,” Adrian said, “but I explicitly ordered the men to stay off the center floor.”

“My husband didn't get that order,” Maria wept. She reached under her apron and pulled out a worn, folded piece of yellow carbon paper. “He got this one.”

She handed it to me. I unfolded it. It was a work order, dated the night of the collapse, commanding a team to excavate the basement beneath the loading floor.

It was signed by Celeste’s personal proxy.

“Celeste?” Adrian whispered, staring at the paper as if it were a snake. “She ordered them underneath?”

“Yes,” Maria sobbed. “And my husband found this in the dirt before the ceiling gave way.”

She reached into her pocket and handed me a heavy silver object. It was an antique pocket watch.

I flipped it open. Inside was an old, faded photograph of a young woman who looked exactly like Celeste, standing arm-in-arm with a man.