Chapter 3 - The Secret of the Maiden Name
"Stand back!" Calvin commanded, drawing his sidearm in the pitch blackness.
He clicked on his shoulder mount light and fired three high-caliber rounds directly into the iron locking mechanism above. Sparks showered down the stairwell, and the acrid smell of burnt cordite filled the tight room, but the reinforced oak door didn't budge.
"It's reinforced with exterior iron plating," Calvin grunted, checking his encrypted radio. "Jamming signal activated. They've cut all cell frequencies inside the lower perimeter."
"We don't need the stairs," I said, my mind racing through the historical blueprints of the estate I had studied when buying the land. "This lower cellar was built as part of an old moonshine distillery during Prohibition. There’s an emergency drainage culvert that runs under the north wall."
We scrambled to the back of the bunker, shoving aside rows of stolen inventory crates until we reached a low stone archway sealed by an iron bar gate. Calvin jammed a steel prybar into the rusted hinges, leveraging his weight until the metal gave way with a loud screech.
The culvert was narrow, damp, and freezing. We crawled on our hands and knees through fifty yards of muddy stone pipe before emerging out into the cool night air near the dense treeline at the edge of the property.
"Marcus, over there," Calvin whispered, pulling me down behind a thick cluster of pine trees.
Near an abandoned wooden tool shed just beyond the outer security fence, a lone figure stood in the dark. It was the woman in the worn canvas coat—the stranger who had been feeding my daughters through the bars.
We moved silently around the perimeter, closing the distance before she could react.
"Don't move," Calvin ordered softly, keeping his flashlight trained on her position.
The woman froze, then slowly raised her hands and turned around. In the bright beam of the flashlight, her face showed deep lines of stress and fatigue, but her eyes were remarkably sharp and filled with a fierce, quiet intensity.
"Marcus Alvarez," she said, her voice trembling slightly, though she refused to back away. "You finally looked past your high walls."
"Who are you?" I demanded, holding up the metal lunch tin with the scratched initials. "Why do you have my late wife's personal belongings? And why have you been sneaking onto my land?"
The woman reached up with a steady hand and pulled down her woolen scarf. "My name is Sarah Miller. I am Elena’s elder sister."
I froze. "Elena didn't have a sister. She only had one sibling—Richard."
"Richard erased me from the family record twelve years ago when I tried to expose his embezzlement of our family's trust fund," Sarah revealed, her voice cracking with emotion. "Elena kept in contact with me in secret right up until the day she died. When Elena passed so suddenly, I knew Richard wouldn't stop there. I knew he would come after your daughters next."
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"What are you saying?" I took a step closer.
"Elena didn't die from an unexpected heart defect, Marcus," Sarah said, stepping forward until she was inches from me. "Richard and Hilda were slowly poisoning her with low doses of digitalis over six months to gain access to her trust accounts. And for the past year, Hilda has been slipping that exact same toxin into Rosalyn and Camille's food to make them chronically ill and weak!"
