Burned By Him, I Ruled Business World

Chapter 2

High-grade gasoline spread fast through the sealed chamber, its toxic fumes hitting me like a wall and stealing my breath in an instant. My stomach twisted in violent spasms.

It wasn't a random enemy strike, but a premeditated execution.

There were fewer than five people in the Moretti family who knew how to shut down the independent ventilation system and flood it through the emergency service port. Gabriel was one of them.

Three years ago, he brought me here himself and set my highest-level fingerprint clearance.

"Sofia, your distress signal will always override every order in the Moretti family." That was what he had said.

Only now did I realize that promise meant nothing compared to Elena's so-called "debt of gratitude".

I forced my body to move, crawling inch by inch on my hands and knees toward the internal communicator in the corner, slamming the highest-level emergency call button linked to Gabriel's earpiece. After a crackle of static, the line finally connected.

What came through was Elena's voice, soft and remorseful on the surface, but clearly intentional underneath. "Gabriel, my angina is acting up again. I'm sorry, if it weren't for my father's last wish, you could be staying with Sofia right now. Is she going to be alright down there on her own?"

"The safe room has an isolated system. It's secure. The doctor is getting a defibrillator ready. Just lie down and rest," Gabriel's low voice came right after.

Every word of his hurt me deeply and made me even harder to breathe. He was upstairs comforting another woman, completely blind to the hell his own wife was drowning in below.

"Help!" I clawed at my throat, pressed my face against the freezing metal panel, and screamed in raw desperation. "The air system is down! There's gasoline in the maintenance shaft, Gabriel!"

The helicopter rotors roared through the line, swallowing every other sound in a brutal mechanical scream. Through the heavy static, broken voices cut in over the comms channel.

"Don, the basement above is on fire. The temperature is rising fast!"

I fixed my eyes on the green indicator on the communicator, waiting for his reply. Like so many times before, I had waited for him to choose me over Elena at family banquets, to stay with me and comfort me when I was on the brink of losing our baby.

But what came back was only his voice, cold and unyielding.

"Escort Elena to Mayeron Clinic first. The safe room has an independent oxygen system. The fire won't reach it. Sofia, stay inside and do not move. That's an order!"

With a click, the line went dead.

The heat kept climbing. Flames ignited almost at once. Fire thundered behind the thick lead door. It couldn't melt the metal, but the extreme temperature turned the room into a sealed oven.

The remaining oxygen was burned away at a terrifying speed. In my last moments of awareness, the baby inside me began to fight downward in frantic, unbearable spasms.

With no equipment, no anesthesia, not even a single breath of clean air, I lay on the scorching tiles, fingers clamped around the iron drain grate, my nails ripping away at the roots.

Half an hour later, a faint yet stubborn newborn cry echoed out as a bloodied, fragile life slipped free from my body. Shaking, I groped for a nearby tactical knife and swiftly cut the umbilical cord still binding us.

It was a boy. The moment he opened his eyes, I went still. They were rare heterochromatic eyes, exactly like mine, left eye a deep blue, right eye an amber gold.

I turned toward the door's edge, where the reinforced blast door had already started to glow red under the relentless heat. "You must survive, my boy."