Chapter 7 - Flames and Reckoning
The ground floor of the mansion was already filling with thick, black smoke as David kicked open the side patio doors. The alarm system blared a high-pitched, deafening screech that reverberated through the vast, empty halls.
"Victoria!" David shouted, coughing as smoke hit his lungs.
He grabbed a wet towel from the laundry room, wrapped it around his mouth, and sprinted toward the central hallway where the open vent shaft lay exposed.
Standing over the ruined floorboards was Victoria. She was pouring canister after canister of industrial lighter fluid down into the subterranean utility space where Sophia had been trapped. She held a silver Zippo lighter in her trembling hand.
"If I can’t have the estate, David," she screamed over the roar of the alarms, "then there won't be a single piece of evidence left to prove she was ever down here!"
"Stop!" David charged forward.
Victoria struck the lighter. A bright yellow flame burst to life.
She dropped it into the hole.
"NO!" David lunged across the slick wood floor, sliding on his knees. He reached into the opening with his bare hand, catching the falling lighter mid-air just inches before it hit the fluid-soaked mattress below.
The heat seared his palm, but he squeezed his fist shut, extinguishing the flame.
Victoria snarled like a wild animal, swinging the heavy metal canister at his head. The aluminum edge struck David across the temple, dazed him, and sent him sprawling onto his back. Blood trickled down his forehead, blurring his vision.
"You always were too sentimental, David," Victoria hissed, raising a heavy brass sculpture from the side table to strike him again. "You should have just let her go three years ago."
As she raised the heavy metal piece, a frail, trembling shadow appeared in the smoke-filled doorway of the kitchen.
It was Sophia.
She hadn't stayed in the gatehouse. She had followed her father back into the nightmare.
In her tiny hands, Sophia held the heavy tactical stun baton left behind by the unconscious guard in the basement. With a cry that shook three years of agony from her chest, she slammed the button and thrust the electric tip against Victoria’s leg.
SPARK!
Ten thousand volts of electricity surged through Victoria’s body. The woman shrieked, dropping the brass sculpture, her muscles convulsing as she crashed heavily to the hardwood floor, unconscious.
David gasped for air, pushing himself up. He looked at Sophia, who dropped the baton, her small body shaking as tears streamed down her soot-stained cheeks.
David pulled his eldest daughter into a fierce, tight embrace just as the heavy front oak doors were smashed open by the State Police SWAT team.
Flashlights cut through the billowing smoke. Officers flooded the room, medics right behind them.
"Secured! We have victims located!" an officer yelled into his radio.
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As the paramedics wrapped blankets around David and Sophia, guiding them out into the cool night air where Emma was already waiting with a police officer, David looked back one last time.
Victoria was being handcuffed and hauled out on a stretcher, facing a lifetime behind bars. The reign of terror in the house on Lakeview Drive was officially over.
