His fiancée ordered the bleeding maid to continue scrubbing—until the billionaire followed the trail of blood on the marble floor and uncovered the truth hidden beneath his family’s vast fortune.

PART 7

They entered the passage as the timer reached four minutes and twelve seconds.

The tunnel descended through wet stone. Priya’s shoes slipped on algae, and Weston caught her twice. Behind them, Wren carried the flashlight and the weight of twenty years of silence.

At the cellar junction, they found six gas canisters wired to a marine ignition switch. Wren opened an iron cabinet and pulled a red lever. Nothing happened.

“Everett replaced the cutoff,” she said.

The display showed 2:51.

Weston examined the wires. “Which line carries the signal?”

“Blue, if he used Silas’s old marine system.”

“If?”

“Everett learned from the same engineers.”

Priya noticed condensation on one pipe but not the others. “This one is warm.”

Weston touched it. “Electrical conduit.”

He opened the cover with a screwdriver from the emergency cabinet. Three wires ran inside: blue, white, and green.

Wren said, “Cut blue.”

Priya looked at her. “Marcus said the fuel charges on the yacht were fake. Everett wants us to panic. Would he make the real device this simple?”

Weston followed the green wire to a pressure sensor beneath the floor. “Blue is a decoy. Cutting it closes the circuit.”

His mother stared at the wiring. “I almost killed everyone.”

“What does green do?” Priya asked.

“Monitors gas pressure. If we vent the canisters before the timer ends, the igniter has nothing to burn.”

The manual valves were locked behind a steel grate. Weston struck it with a fire axe, but the old iron held.

Priya saw a narrow gap near the floor. Her hand was smaller than his.

“No,” he said as she knelt.

“There are four valves and less than two minutes.”

She removed the blood-soaked tie. The cut had opened wider. She wrapped her sleeve around it, pushed her hand through the gap, and reached for the first wheel.

Metal tore her skin again. She turned the valve. One.

Weston braced the grate and pulled it outward, widening the space by an inch. Two.

The countdown reached 1:06.

Priya’s fingers were slick. The third valve refused to move.

“Use both hands,” Wren said.

“I can’t reach.”

Wren dropped beside her, forced her own arm through a higher opening, and caught the wheel from the opposite side. Together, they turned it. Three.

Twenty-eight seconds.

The last valve sat beyond Priya’s fingertips.

Weston wedged the axe beneath the grate. “Move back.”

He threw his weight down. The bolts ripped from the stone. Priya crawled through, seized the final wheel, and turned as the timer reached three.

Gas hissed into the old drainage shaft and vented toward the empty cliff.

The display reached zero. The igniter sparked. A dull flash traveled through the drainage pipe, followed by a roar outside, but the cellar remained intact.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Weston pulled Priya from behind the grate and held her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“No,” she said honestly. “But I am moving.”