Chapter 5 - Beneath the Wine Cellar
Miller called the tactical breechers forward.
"Look for a release mechanism," Miller ordered, running his gloved fingers along the heavy wooden wine racks. "Check behind the bottles."
"Don't bother," I said.
I leaned down to inspect the baseboard beneath a display of rare Bordeaux. In the shadow of the lower shelf, almost invisible against the dark oak, sat an electronic panel—a biometric fingerprint scanner paired with a four-digit numeric keypad.
"It’s sealed," Miller cursed. "We need a ram or a heavy rotary saw to cut through this steel."
"We don't have time," I said. "Natalia is in this house. If she’s inside that room, she's destroying evidence. Or worse."
I stared at the glowing blue light of the fingerprint pad. Fernando was in custody five miles away. But this was his private house, and Fernando was an arrogant narcissist. He never memorized random numbers.
I remembered the date my father died: November 14th. The day Fernando realized he was only one step away from thirty million dollars.
I punched in: *1 - 1 - 1 - 4.*
A red light flashed. *Incorrect.*
"One more try before it locks out the circuit for an hour," Miller warned, raising his hand. "Wait for the heavy tools, Valerie."
"No," I muttered. My mind raced through the dates. Not my father's death. Fernando didn't care about my father. He cared about his own achievements.
The day the judge signed the custody order awarding him sole control of Sophia: August 23rd.
*0 - 8 - 2 - 3.*
A high-pitched tone beeped. The indicator flashed green.
With a heavy, pneumatic hiss, the entire central wine rack—holding over three hundred bottles of vintage wine—disengaged from its magnetic floor tracks and swung forward like a vault door, revealing a downward flight of poured-concrete stairs.
The smell that drifted up from the darkness wasn't the sweet, woody scent of wine.
It was bleach. Industrial, suffocating bleach, laced with the metallic tang of dried blood and medical-grade ether.
"Stack up!" Miller shouted, raising his Glock. "Flashlights on! Watch the blind corners!"
The four SWAT officers descended into the stairwell, their weapon lights piercing the thick, chemical fog. I followed close behind, my tactical knife gripped firmly in my right hand, my pulse pounding a heavy, rhythmic war beat in my ears.
At the bottom of the ten stairs lay a heavy, soundproofed blast door, half-ajar.
From within the darkness, we heard a frantic, wet scraping sound.
"Police! Don't move!"
Miller kicked the heavy door open, flooding the subterranean room with five thousand lumens of tactical light.
A woman shrieked, dropping a plastic bottle of industrial acid onto the floor. The acid hissed violently as it splattered against the tile, eating away at a pile of shredded documents.
Natalia Rossi stood in the center of the bunker, her silk blouse soaked in sweat and chemical residue, her eyes wild with panic. In her hand was a half-burned passport.
"Don't shoot!" she screamed, shielding her face with chemical-burned hands. "It wasn't my idea! He made me do it! He said she wouldn't feel anything!"
"Hands on your head! On the floor now!" Miller roared.
Two officers tackled her to the ground, pinning her arms behind her back and snapping flex-cuffs around her wrists.
I didn't look at Natalia.
May you like
I looked at the room.
***
