Damien didn't waste a single second.
He saw the shock on Seraphina's face, but he knew they couldn't afford to stand still. Behind them, the heavy wooden door groaned loudly as Julian’s men slammed their weight against it, trying to bend the steel pipe jamming the handle.
"We have to keep moving," Damien said firmly.
He took her cold hand, pulling her away from the hot boilers and through a small metal door at the back of the maintenance room. They stepped onto a steep, narrow flight of concrete stairs that went deep down into the hotel’s lowest basement.
The air down here was cold, damp, and smelled of wet stone and old dust. It was the lowest utility level of the Grand Plaza, built decades ago and mostly forgotten when the main building was modernized.
Damien pulled her down a long
