Chapter 6 - BURIED ALIVEDarkness swallowed the archive.
Grace’s first thought was Lily.
Not the locked door.
Not the air thinning in the underground room.
Not the fact that Victoria was standing somewhere above them with enough hatred to burn the world down.
Lily.
Grace lunged toward the door, but Nathan caught her.
“Grace, stop.”
“My daughter is upstairs in that house.”
“Our daughter,” Nathan said.
The correction stopped her for half a breath.
Then she shoved him.
“Then get us out.”
Mason was already working on the keypad beside the door. “She disabled the internal release.”
Nathan pulled out his phone.
No signal.
Of course.
Charles Cole had built a room designed to keep secrets in and panic out.
Above them, Victoria’s heels clicked against the chapel floor.
Her voice came through the intercom, smooth and almost amused.
“I wondered how long it would take you to find the archive.”
Nathan looked up.
“Open the door.”
Victoria laughed.
“You still give orders like people are supposed to obey you.”
“I said open it.”
“No,” Victoria replied. “You said that like my brother. But you never treated me like family, did you?”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“You knew.”
“That Charles Cole was my father?” Victoria’s voice sharpened. “I knew before you did. Mother made sure of that.”
Grace whispered, “Elizabeth Ashford.”
Victoria heard her.
“Oh, Grace. Still alive. Still inconvenient.”
Nathan stepped closer to the intercom.
“You attacked a child.”
“I protected my future.”
“You almost married your brother.”
A pause.
Then Victoria’s voice went cold.
“Careful.”
Nathan knew he had hit the wound.
“The wedding was never real, was it? It was a cover. A legal maneuver. You needed my name, my position, my signature.”
“I needed what should have been mine.”
“You are Charles Cole’s daughter. You already had his blood.”
“But not his legitimacy!” Victoria screamed.
The sound echoed through the chapel.
Then silence.
When she spoke again, her control had cracked.
“You grew up in the main house. You got the name. The portraits. The board seat. The trust. I got birthday cards with no signature and a mother who told me to smile while your family pretended I was nothing.”
Nathan stared into the dark.
For the first time, he heard the ruined child beneath Victoria’s cruelty.
It did not excuse her.
It made her more dangerous.
Grace moved beside him.
“Lily did nothing to you.”
Victoria’s laugh turned venomous.
“Lily took the only thing I had left.”
Nathan’s hand curled into a fist.
“What did you do with her?”
Victoria did not answer.
Grace lunged toward the intercom.
“Where is my daughter?”
Above them, a door opened.
Another voice entered the room through the speaker.
Lily’s.
Small.
Terrified.
“Mommy?”
Grace screamed.
Nathan’s blood turned to ice.
Victoria spoke softly.
“You have ten minutes, Nathan. Transfer control of the trust to me, or I tell the world Grace Bennett kidnapped your daughter again.”
Grace’s knees buckled.
Nathan caught her.
Victoria continued.
“And this time, she won’t survive prison.”
The intercom went dead.
In the darkness, Nathan turned toward Mason.
“Break the door.”
Mason looked at the reinforced steel.
“That could take longer than ten minutes.”
Nathan pulled the confession letter from his jacket.
“No,” he said. “We’re not breaking the door.”
May you like
He turned toward Grace.
“We’re burning my father’s secrets down.”
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