I stared at the paper. It was salvation. It was everything I had been begging the universe for. But I remembered Mason’s rigid, trembling body when she spoke. I remembered the sheer terror in his eyes.

“And if I refuse?” I asked.

Evelyn’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Medical equipment is so delicate, isn’t it? Hospitals are chaotic. Power grids fail. Machines malfunction. It would be a terrible tragedy if something happened to little Leo before his surgery.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. She wasn’t just trying to fire me. She was threatening my brother’s life to keep me away from Mason. Why? What could a twenty-two-year-old girl with a mop possibly uncover that terrified her so much?

Door.

The word echoed in my mind.

I didn’t touch the check. I looked Evelyn dead in the eye, drawing on every ounce of street-hardened grit I possessed. “I signed a contract with Mr. Blackwood. I’ll take my orders from him.”

I turned and walked out, my legs feeling like lead. I expected Marcus to grab me, to throw me against the wall, but they let me go. They were too smart to kill me on my first day. But I knew I had just started a clock.

I made it back to my room, locking the door and backing away until I hit the bed. I had to get out. I had to take Mason and run.

A tiny scratching sound came from my door.

I froze. I crept forward and eased the door open. Standing in the dimly lit hallway, clutching a worn stuffed bear, was Mason. He looked up at me, his dark eyes wide in the gloom. He reached out and grabbed my pant leg, tugging insistently.

“Mason? What are you doing out of bed?” I whispered, dropping to my knees.

He didn’t speak. He just pointed down the hall. Toward the velvet ropes. Toward the North Wing.

“No, buddy, we can’t go down there,” I breathed, terrified that Marcus was watching from the security cameras.

But Mason was remarkably persistent. He tugged harder, his small face setting into a mask of desperate determination. He looked up at the ceiling corner. I followed his gaze. The red light of the security camera was off. It was dead.

Someone had blinded the cameras in this corridor.

A chill raced down my spine. Evelyn and Marcus. They were preparing to do something tonight. They were coming for me. Or worse, they were coming for Mason.

I had to know what was in that wing. I had to know why they were so afraid of this child remembering.

“Okay,” I whispered, taking his tiny, cold hand in mine. “Show me.”

We slipped past the velvet ropes. The air in the North Wing felt different—stale, heavy, thick with the scent of dried lavender and old dust. There were no lights, only the pale moonlight filtering through the tall, arched windows, casting long, skeletal shadows across the Persian rugs.

Mason led me past closed doors, his steps silent, until we reached the very end of the corridor. It was a dead end. Just a massive wall of intricately carved mahogany paneling.

Mason let go of my hand. He walked up to the wood, reaching his small fingers toward a decorative rosette carved into the trim. He pressed it.

There was a heavy, mechanical clack that echoed far too loudly in the silence. A seam appeared in the solid wood. A hidden door cracked open, revealing pitch-black darkness within. A panic room.

Mason stepped back, refusing to look inside. He buried his face in my leg, trembling violently.

I swallowed hard, pushing the heavy door open. Fumbling along the wall, my hand brushed a heavy switch. I flicked it.

Dim, recessed lighting flickered to life. The room wasn’t an empty steel bunker. It was a beautiful, elegant study. Bookshelves lined the walls. A delicate writing desk sat in the center. But it was what lay on the floor that made my blood run cold.

A massive, dark, rusted stain marred the center of the cream-colored rug. It was blood. A lot of it.

And embedded into the heavy plaster wall behind the desk were three deep, unmistakable bullet holes.

The story Alexander Blackwood had been fed—the story the police had stamped on the official report—was that Camila had been killed in a drive-by shooting in downtown Dallas. It was a lie.

She hadn’t been killed in the streets. She had been slaughtered right here, in her own home. And looking at the narrow vent near the floorboards of the panic room, I realized with sickening clarity why Mason had stopped speaking.

He hadn’t just lost his mother. He had been hiding in this room, watching through the slats as she was murdered.

I stepped closer to the desk, my hands shaking. Beneath a layer of dust, resting neatly next to a silver letter opener, was a small, black digital voice recorder. The red battery light was miraculously still blinking.

I reached out and picked it up. My thumb hovered over the play button.

Suddenly, the dim lights overhead violently popped, plunging the secret room into absolute darkness. The heavy mahogany door slammed shut behind me with the finality of a coffin lid.

From the absolute pitch black of the room, a voice drifted through the air vents.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t hear the door open, Emily?” Evelyn whispered, her voice distorted and metallic. “You should have taken the check.”

Panic, sharp and metallic, tasted like copper in the back of my throat. I stood in the pitch-black panic room, one hand clutching the digital recorder, the other desperately gripping Mason’s shoulder. The little boy was perfectly still, his breathing shallow and rapid. He had been in the dark here before.

“Evelyn!” I shouted, my voice cracking against the soundproofed walls. “You can’t do this! Alexander is in the house!”

A low, cruel laugh hissed through the air vent near the ceiling. “Mr. Blackwood took a mild sedative two hours ago with his whiskey, as he does every night. A suggestion of mine to help with his… grief. He won’t wake up until dawn. And by then, Emily, you’ll be a tragic story. A deranged, desperate girl who snapped, kidnapped the heir, and forced my head of security to use lethal force.”

The intercom clicked off with a sharp snap of static.

They were going to kill us. They were going to frame me.

Think, Emily, think.

I dropped to my knees, wrapping my arms around Mason. “I’ve got you,” I whispered fiercely into his ear. “I promise you, they are not going to hurt you.”

I needed to hear what was on the recorder. It was the only weapon I had. Shielding the device beneath my uniform to muffle the sound, I pressed Play.

A burst of static, and then a woman’s voice filled the space between my hands. It was soft, melodic, but threaded with absolute panic. It was Camila.

“If something happens to me, Alexander needs to find this. It’s Evelyn. She and Marcus have been running a shadow ledger through the trucking fleet. They’re moving weapons inside our shipping crates for the Cartel. Alexander doesn’t know. He thinks the losses are bad logistics. I found the offshore accounts. They know I’ve been asking questions. Tonight… Evelyn sent the night shift home early. The gates are unlocked. Oh God, Alexander isn’t home… I hear them on the stairs. They let someone in. Mason, baby, stay in the wall. Don’t make a sound…”

The recording ended with the deafening, horrific sound of splintering wood, followed by three sharp gunshots. Then, endless, agonizing silence.

Tears burned my eyes. I looked down at the darkness where I knew Mason was standing. He had lived with this truth locked inside his tiny head for two years. He had watched the people who orchestrated his mother’s butchery bring him his breakfast, wash his clothes, and pat his head every single day.

Rage, hot and blinding, replaced my fear. They were not going to get away with this. Not tonight.

“Mason,” I whispered, feeling along the wall. “This room was built to keep people safe. But how do we get out from the inside?”

There had to be a manual release. Electronic locks fail in fires; building codes required an override. I ran my hands frantically over the smooth oak paneling near the heavy door, scraping my fingernails in the dark. Nothing.

I moved to the desk, running my hands underneath the heavy lip of the wood. My fingers brushed against a cold, metal latch hidden in the center drawer cavity. I pulled it.

CLACK.

The heavy deadbolts in the door retracted with a mechanical groan. The door cracked open an inch, letting a sliver of pale moonlight from the hallway slice into the room.

I peeked through the gap. The hallway was empty, but I could hear heavy, rhythmic footsteps moving up the main staircase. Marcus.

We had to move. We couldn’t go back to the main house—they had the high ground and the guns. We had to go down. The service stairs led to the kitchens, and beyond that, the underground garage.

“Hold my hand. Do not let go,” I breathed to Mason.

We slipped out of the panic room, abandoning the graveyard of Camila’s final moments. We hugged the shadows, moving as fast as my bruised ribs would allow. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like a gunshot.

We reached the service stairwell just as the beam of a heavy tactical flashlight swept across the entrance of the North Wing.

“They’re out of the room,” Marcus’s deep, gravelly voice echoed. “Check the east corridor. I’ll take the stairs.”

I pulled Mason into the narrow, concrete stairwell, gently closing the fire door behind us. We descended in the dark, the air growing cooler as we headed toward the basement. The recorder felt like a block of burning coal in my pocket. It was the key to taking down an empire, but it was useless if we were dead.

We reached the kitchen level. The massive stainless-steel room was bathed in the eerie blue glow of industrial refrigerators. I spotted the heavy steel door leading to the garage. We were almost there.

Suddenly, the kitchen lights flared to blinding life.

I spun around, throwing my body in front of Mason.

Standing by the island, a suppressed pistol resting casually on the marble countertop, was Marcus. Beside him, smoothing the lapels of her pristine uniform, was Evelyn.

“You really are a stubborn little rat, Emily,” Evelyn sighed, looking genuinely exhausted. “I gave you a chance to save your brother. Now, neither of you will survive the week.”

Marcus picked up the gun, his dead eyes locking onto my chest. “Step away from the boy.”

I backed up, pressing Mason behind my legs, my hands gripping the edge of a heavy butcher block. I was out of running room. I was out of places to hide.

“You don’t have to do this,” I gasped, staring at Marcus. “Alexander will find out. You can’t hide it forever!”

“Alexander will find an unstable girl who took his son hostage,” Marcus stated coldly, raising the weapon. “He’ll thank me for saving the boy.”

He leveled the black cylinder of the silencer directly at my forehead. My breath caught. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the end.