Chapter 5 - Tearing Open the Tomb
The dim rectangular void swallowed Salvatore's voice, returning only the desperate scraping of shoes against metal rungs.
Salvatore reached down with both hands, grabbing the reinforced steel handles embedded along the underside of the heavy hatch.
With an explosive heave, he ripped the thick stone-and-steel composite door back until it slammed flat against the foyer marble.
The hidden mechanism shuddered violently, exposing the entirety of the subterranean vault concealed beneath the mansion's architectural blueprint.
A single, flickering low-wattage yellow security bulb hummed in the depths below, casting sickly amber shadows across concrete walls.
At the base of a narrow, rusted steel access ladder sat a figure curled against the damp foundation.
The young man wore a tattered, dusty white dress shirt and dark trousers stained with grease and dried watermarks.
His short dark-brown hair was wildly disheveled and matted with grime, his handsome face sunken, hollow, and deathly pale.
His blue eyes, identical to Salvatore's own, were ringed with red veins of endless, sleepless agony.
Marco shielded his dilated pupils from the sudden invasion of the chandelier’s brilliant golden light.
His lips were cracked and dry, his hands trembling violently as he reached out toward the steel rungs of the ladder.
"Dad... is it really you?" Marco whispered, his voice catching in his throat as tears tracked clean lines through the dirt on his cheeks.
"You found me... oh God, you actually found me," the twenty-three-year-old sobbed, his knees buckling under his emaciated weight.
Salvatore leaned into the opening, his heart tearing in two at the sight of his firstborn son reduced to a caged animal.
The grief struck him first, a heavy, suffocating wave that threatened to buckle his legendary iron composure.
Then came the realization, cold and venomous, that his missing son had never left the grounds of his Chicago estate.
Marco had been starving, freezing, and rotting in total darkness directly beneath the feet of the guests drinking champagne upstairs.
Salvatore slowly turned his head toward the woman cowering on the cream rug across the foyer.
His dark eyes held a murderous, volcanic fire that could have reduced the entire estate to ashes.
May you like
"What the hell did you do to my son?!" Salvatore bellowed, his voice shaking the massive crystal chandelier overhead.
Victoria scrambled backward on her hands and knees, her face drained of all humanity as she watched her empire crumble to dust.
