My mother imprisoned my young pregnant wife inside a hidden room beneath our mafia estate, convinced her I had abandoned her, and left her wedding ring inside our baby's empty crib so I would believe she had run away. But the moment I found the desperate message she carved into the wall, I realized my wife had never escaped—and someone inside my own family wanted her to disappear forever.

“Push through it, sweetheart! We have to move, or we die here!” I yelled over the echoing din of boots and shouting guards in the corridor outside.

I slung my arm around Grace’s waist, taking her weight as we sprinted past the iron-framed hospital bed toward the back of the reinforced prison room. Behind us, the heavy steel door was bombarded by a volley of tactical rifle fire, chewing up the doorframe and showering us in concrete dust.

“Julian... the back wall,” Grace gasped, pointing a trembling finger toward the far dark corner where the plumbing pipes ran upward into the estate’s foundation. “When she brought me food... I noticed the maintenance hatch. It leads to the old drainage tunnels.”

I didn't waste a second. I holstered my sidearm, grabbed an iron pipe left behind by the builders who constructed the cell, and jammed it into the rusted seam of the metal maintenance access panel.

Crack!

The rusted welds snapped under my weight. I threw my shoulder against the panel, ripping it off its hinges and tossing it aside. A rush of damp, cool air—smelling of earth and stagnant river water—billowed out from the dark tunnel ahead.

“Go! Inside!” I urged, pushing Grace through the opening first.

She winced, crying out as her swollen belly scraped against the jagged metal edge, but she dragged herself through into the blackness.

Just as I prepared to dive in after her, the prison cell door finally gave way with a deafening crash. Heavy boots swarmed into the room.

“There! In the tunnel!” a guard roared.

I whipped my Sig Sauer around, firing three calculated shots into the smoke-filled doorway. A guard screamed, dropping his rifle and clutching his leg. Another ducked behind the overturned hospital bed.

I scrambled backward into the drainage tunnel, grabbed the heavy iron maintenance door, and slammed it shut, sliding the thick deadbolt lock from the inside just as a hail of bullets impacted the exterior metal with a deafening screech of sparks.

We were plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness.

“Julian... I’m scared,” Grace’s voice trembled from somewhere in front of me, accompanied by heavy, ragged breathing. “The baby... the contractions are coming every two minutes. I think... I think the stress is bringing him early.”

I reached out blindly in the dark until my hand brushed against her shoulder. I pulled her against me, feeling the hard curve of her pregnant belly through her torn dress.

“I’m right here, Grace. I’m not letting anyone touch you,” I vowed, pressing my lips to her damp forehead. “We’re going to get out of these tunnels, find a doctor, and get our son into this world safely. I swear it on my life.”

“Where does this tunnel go?” she whispered, leaning heavily against my chest as we began to shuffle forward in the pitch black, feeling our way along the curved brick walls.

“It leads down to the old smugglers’ docks on the East River,” I said, my jaw clenched as I listened for any sound of pursuit behind the iron door. “My father built it thirty years ago for emergency extractions. Elena thinks she owns this estate, but she forgot that I helped design its ghosts.”

For thirty agonizing minutes, we navigated the labyrinthine brick tunnels under the Rossi estate. Every step was a battle against the damp muck underfoot and the agonizing pain gripping Grace’s body as her labor rapidly accelerated.