Chapter 7 - The Senator’s Terms
I snapped my flashlight toward the steel door, but before I could reach it, the heavy door slammed shut with a deafening metallic boom. The magnetic lock engaged with a loud clack.
I was trapped inside the vault.
“William!” I yelled toward the security camera mounted above the monitors. “It’s over! The medical report is already filed! Sophie is out of the state!”
A harsh, metallic chuckle rasped through the intercom speaker.
“Do you really think a small-town medical report matters to me, Ben?” William said smoothly. “By six o'clock this morning, every newspaper in New England will run a lead story about a distraught, mentally unstable journalist who kidnapped his injured daughter from a hospital, assaulted two state troopers, and vanished into the woods.”
“Nobody is going to believe that lie!” I shouted, pacing toward the camera. “I have your ledger right here in my hand! I have the names, the accounts, the blackmail files!”
“And where are you going to take it?” William asked, his voice dripping with condescension. “You are six feet underground in a room built with six-inch reinforced steel walls. There is no cellular signal down there. There are no windows. Air is pumped in through a single ventilation shaft that I can turn off with a switch on my desk.”
The air intake vent near the ceiling gave a soft hiss and suddenly sputtered to a stop.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
“Victoria is standing right here beside me, Ben,” William continued. “She made her choice years ago. She knows that family legacy comes before emotion. She understands how power works.”
I looked directly into the camera lens. “Put her on.”
A long silence stretched over the speaker. Then, a shaky, trembling breath echoed through the line.
“Ben?” Victoria’s voice sounded thin, stripped of all her previous cold composure.
“Victoria,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm and steady. “He trapped you in this sickness when you were a child, but you don't have to let him destroy Sophie too. She drew the trapdoor for me, Victoria. She knew where he kept his secrets because she saw you come down here!”
“Ben... please,” Victoria whimpered. “Just give him the ledger. Sign the custody agreement. He’ll let you leave the country. You can go back to Europe. He won't hurt you if you just leave!”
“He hurt our daughter!” I roared, my voice echoing off the cold steel walls. “He bruised her legs! He made her run through the snow barefoot until her feet bled! How can you stand next to him and ask me to make a deal with a monster?”
“He is my father!” she screamed back, breaking down into frantic sobbing. “He controls everything! If I defy him, he will ruin me! He will put me in prison!”
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“Then let him try!” I yelled. “Because if I die in this room, Rachel releases every document, every photo, and every medical file directly to the Department of Justice. Do you really think Agent Miller at the FBI in Albany is going to hide your father’s crimes?”
The intercom went dead silent.
