Chapter 8
Gasping for breath, Arthur quickly retrieved his flashlight from the floor, sweeping the beam across the corridor until it illuminated the brass key still dangling from the heavy wooden door. He snatched the key, shoved it into the rusted lock, and threw the door open. The yellow beam cut into the darkness, revealing Clara huddled near the far wall, her face stained with tears and dirt, her pink dress ruined. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sudden glare, before scrambling forward into the relative safety of the corridor, leaning heavily against Arthur’s side for support.
"Are you alright?" Arthur asked urgently, his hands hovering protectively over her trembling shoulders. Clara nodded mutely, biting her lower lip to steady herself as she looked down at the subdued Marcus writhing on the floor. "He... he has the master codes," Clara whispered hoarsely. "Vivienne has the entire estate wired. Security, communications, even the local police dispatch lines through a private proxy network." Arthur’s expression hardened. It explained why no emergency services had responded to the initial panic and why the estate felt like an impenetrable fortress of glamorous deception.
"We need to get to the master control room in the east wing," Arthur said decisively, helping Clara to her feet. "That’s where the hardline uplink is located—the one channel Vivienne can't firewall remotely." They bypassed Marcus, who glared at them with unabated venom from the floor, and hurried back toward the service elevator. The climb up was agonizingly slow, the grinding mechanical hum of the old cable system feeling entirely too loud in the quiet building. Every second they spent in transit felt like an invitation for Vivienne’s other loyalists to intercept them before they reached the surface.
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When the elevator doors finally slid open, they stepped out not into the rustic kitchens, but directly into the ornate service hallway behind the main banquet hall. Through the heavy velvet curtains, the muffled strains of a string quartet and polite applause drifted to their ears. The wedding reception was officially underway. Guests in black-tie attire and glittering evening gowns were mingling, sipping expensive vintage champagne, and laughing, entirely oblivious to the dark drama unfolding just behind the reinforced architectural partitions of the historic venue.
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