Chapter 3 - The Basement FloorJulian looked unrecognizable.
His face was bruised purple across the cheekbone, his right leg stretched out at an unnatural angle with his knee swollen to twice its normal size. Both arms were covered in track marks and fresh adhesive bandages where an IV line had clearly been tapped to keep him conscious and cooperative.
When the red beam of my flashlight hit his face, he squeezed his eyes shut, his lips cracked and bleeding from severe dehydration.
“Dad... you shouldn't have come,” he whispered, his voice shaking violently. “They have cameras... motion sensors on the perimeter...”
“Let them look,” I said, sliding my arm behind his shoulders to support his weight. I pulled a flask of warm water from my coat and pressed it to his lips. He drank greedily, coughing as the liquid hit his throat.
“How long?” I demanded, pulling out heavy-duty bolt cutters from my pack.
“Three days,” Julian gasped, leaning his head back against the cold concrete pillar. “Graham found out I intercepted the shipping manifests. He wanted the encryption keys to the Mercer Family Trust servers so he could liquidate our assets before the audit hit. When I refused, Lena watched... she stood right there and watched them break my knee with a lead pipe.”
The rage that surged through my veins was cold, lethal, and absolute.
I fitted the jaws of the hydraulic bolt cutters around the thick steel chain anchoring Julian to the pillar. I planted my boots against the concrete, gripped the handles with both hands, and threw my entire weight backward.
CRACK.
The steel link snapped like dry pine.
I moved to the second chain binding his wrists. With another brutal heave, it sheared apart.
Julian slumped forward into my arms, sobbing quietly—not from pain, but from the sudden, overwhelming release of terror.
“Can you stand?” I asked, sliding his good arm over my shoulder.
“My leg... I don’t think the knee is attached to anything, Dad. It’s shattered.”
“Then I’ll carry you,” I said, hoisting him up with the strength of a man who had spent decades wrestling heavy freight pallets in blinding snowstorms.
We made it halfway back toward the crawlspace vent when heavy footsteps echoed down the concrete stairs leading from the main house.
“Hey! Who’s down there?” a gruff voice shouted.
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A beam of a high-powered flashlight cut through the darkness, illuminating the utility corridor just twenty feet away.
Graham Whitmore’s head of security—a massive, scarred ex-mercenary named Vance—stood at the end of the aisle, holding a suppressed Glock pointed straight at my chest.
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