Chapter 6 - THE ALTAR OF LIES
The chapel plunged into near darkness as the moonlight shifted behind a storm cloud outside. Only the faint, eerie glow of the silver music box illuminated the center aisle.
Elena ran to the massive wooden doors, pulling frantically at the iron handles. They were completely sealed.
“Sofia!” Elena screamed at the ceiling speakers, her voice tearing with raw panic. “Let him go! Take me instead, please! He’s just a little boy!”
Laughter echoed from the speakers. It wasn’t the sweet, carefully curated laugh Luca had fallen in love with. It was cold, jagged, and full of venom.
“He’s not just a boy, Elena,” Isabella’s voice crackled. “He’s the leverage. And you were always too soft to understand what it takes to survive.”
Luca stepped past Elena, moving slowly toward the grand marble altar at the front of the chapel. “You’ve got me in the cage, Isabella. Or should I call you Sofia? Come out and face me.”
“Patience, my love,” she replied.
Victor walked up beside Luca, his revolver aimed steadily into the shadows behind the altar. “Where is the vault, Luca? We don’t have time for her games.”
Luca looked down at the blueprint he had taken from the gold locket. He walked behind the massive stone altar. Beneath a heavy, velvet tapestry depicting a saint, there was a seam in the stone floor.
“Here,” Luca said.
He knelt down and pressed his palm against a hidden indentation in the stone. A green laser shot out from the floor, sweeping across Luca’s eye for a retinal scan. A second later, a loud, hydraulic hiss echoed through the chapel.
The heavy stone floor slowly slid back, revealing a rusted iron hatch with a heavy brass keyhole.
“The key,” Luca said, holding his hand out to Victor.
Victor handed him the heavy brass key.
Luca inserted it into the hatch and turned. The lock disengaged with a heavy clunk.
Together, the two men heaved the iron hatch open, revealing a dark, narrow stone staircase leading deep into the earth beneath the orphanage.
“Go,” Victor said, checking his watch. “We have twenty minutes.”
They descended into the freezing darkness, the air smelling of earth and old secrets. At the bottom of the stairs, they entered a small, concrete room.
In the center of the room was a heavy steel pedestal.
Resting on top of it was the Blackwood Ledger. A massive, leather-bound book that held the keys to billions of dollars, political blackmail, and the entire underworld.
But sitting on top of the ledger was a folded piece of paper.
Luca approached it carefully. He unfolded the note.
It was written in fresh ink.
Did you really think I’d leave it that easy? Look up, Luca.
Luca’s head snapped up.
Hanging from the ceiling, directly above the ledger, was a clear glass tube filled with a glowing green liquid. A highly volatile, military-grade acid.
Wired to the glass tube was a digital timer. It wasn’t counting down from twenty minutes.
It was counting down from three minutes.
“It’s a booby trap,” Victor growled, stepping back. “If we take the ledger off the pedestal, the pressure plate triggers the acid. It burns the book, and us, to ash.”
Elena stepped into the room, her eyes darting frantically. “Where is Leo? She said he was down here!”
“She lied,” Luca realized, his blood running cold. “She separated us. She wanted us down here to deal with the trap while she—”
Suddenly, the heavy iron hatch at the top of the stairs slammed shut.
The sound of a heavy padlock clicking into place echoed down the stairwell.
They were trapped in the vault.
“Hello, Luca,” Isabella’s voice echoed down the stone walls. Not through a speaker this time. She was standing right on the other side of the hatch.
“Isabella!” Luca roared, slamming his fists against the iron door above them. “Open this door!”
“I can’t do that, darling,” Isabella said softly. “You see, you were never meant to leave this room alive. But I needed you to open it for me.”
“You won’t get the ledger!” Victor yelled up at her. “The pressure plate is rigged. If you take it, it burns!”
“I know,” Isabella laughed. “That’s why I brought a counterweight.”
A small, terrifying sound echoed through the iron hatch.
A child’s whimper.
“Mommy?” a tiny, frightened voice called out.
Elena completely broke. She threw herself against the iron door, her hands bleeding as she clawed at the metal. “LEO! Mommy is here! I’m right here, baby!”
“Listen to me very carefully, Luca,” Isabella said, her voice dropping all pretense of affection. “I have the boy. And I have the detonator for the C4 wired around his little waist. You are going to carefully take the ledger off that pedestal, and you are going to replace it with exactly forty-five pounds of weight.”
Luca looked around the empty, bare concrete room. There were no sandbags. There were no rocks.
“There’s nothing in here to use as a weight!” Luca shouted.
“I know,” Isabella said.
A horrifying silence filled the stairwell.
Victor looked at the glass tube of acid. Then he looked at the pedestal.
“She doesn’t want an object, Luca,” Victor whispered, his voice trembling as the realization hit him.
May you like
He looked at Elena’s little boy crying through the door. Then, he looked at his own weathered hands.
“A six-year-old boy,” Victor said quietly, doing the math in his head. “Weighs exactly forty-five pounds.”
