THE MAN WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD

“We’re locked in.”

Elena slammed her shoulder against the heavy oak door. It didn’t budge. Steel reinforcements framed the wood.

The revelation hanging in the air—that Thomas, the monster who murdered her mother, was her biological father—was too massive to process. I could see the shock paralyzing her.

“Elena, focus,” I commanded gently, snapping into my professional nurse persona. “Panic later. Right now, we are in a trap.”

Little Leo stood in the corner, clutching his bear. He didn’t seem scared of us, just confused. “Dad said I should wait in my room when the alarm goes off.”

“What alarm?” Adrian asked.

Suddenly, a thick, sweet-smelling smoke began hissing from the air vents along the baseboards.

Gas.

I recognized the chemical odor immediately. It was a potent surgical anesthetic. In a confined space, it would knock us unconscious in less than three minutes.

“Cover your faces!” I shouted, pulling my shirt over my nose.

Adrian grabbed Leo, shielding the boy’s face against his chest.

Elena was staring blankly at the rosary in her hand.

I grabbed her arm, shaking her hard. “Elena! We need a way out!”

She blinked, coming back to reality. Her eyes hardened. She shoved the rosary into her pocket. “The windows are shatterproof glass. But the basement… my mother built an escape tunnel in the basement blueprints. I saw them years ago.”

“Lead the way!”

We hurried down the hallway, coughing as the white gas rapidly filled the rooms. Elena found the basement door, kicked it open, and we tumbled down the wooden stairs.

The basement was a sprawling, concrete storage area. It was lined with old furniture and boxes covered in sheets.

But resting on a chair in the center of the room was something completely out of place.

A dark wool coat.

Gabriel’s coat. The one he had been wearing when he was kidnapped.

I walked over to it. “Why did they leave this here?”

I patted down the pockets. In the right pocket, my fingers brushed against cold metal. I pulled it out.

It was a small, heavy black disc with a blinking red light.

A military-grade GPS tracker.

“Thomas wanted us to find this house,” I realized aloud. “He wanted us locked in here to be gassed, while he kept Gabriel's tracker here to make it look like they never left.”

“He’s buying time,” Elena said, coughing. The gas was creeping down the stairs. “The tunnel is behind that bookshelf.”

Adrian and Elena pushed the heavy wooden bookcase aside, revealing a reinforced steel door. Elena spun the old mechanical lock, entering a combination she remembered from her childhood.

It clicked. She pulled it open, revealing a dark, damp passage leading out into the woods.

We rushed in, sealing the door behind us, blocking out the anesthetic gas.

We stumbled through the dark tunnel for fifty yards before emerging into the cool night air behind the estate's stone wall.

Adrian collapsed onto the grass, panting, keeping a tight hold on Leo.

“Are you okay?” Adrian asked the boy.

Leo nodded, rubbing his eyes. “Why did my dad try to put us to sleep?”

Adrian looked at the boy, his heart breaking. “Because your dad is very sick, Leo. But we’re going to stop him.”

I looked at the GPS tracker in my hand. The red light was still blinking.

Then, an idea hit me.

“Thomas left this to trick anyone looking for Gabriel,” I said. “But trackers can be reverse-engineered.”

Elena looked at me. “What?”

“My late husband was a detective,” I said. “He taught me how to read these. This is a receiver. If we can access the frequency logs, we can see the origin point where it was activated before they brought it here.”

Elena pulled out her laptop from her backpack. She was, after all, the operational brain of the Russo empire. She connected the device via a USB cable.

Within two minutes, she bypassed the encryption.

A map popped up on her screen. A bright red dot pulsed on the screen, showing the tracker's activation point.

“It’s at the docks,” Elena said. “Pier 44. One of our old import warehouses.”

“That’s where Gabriel is,” I said, packing my bag.

Elena looked at me, her face pale but resolute.

“Katherine,” she whispered. “If Thomas is my father… does that mean I have his sickness inside me?”

Before I could answer, the screen on her laptop flashed violently.

The red dot vanished.

Replaced by a live video feed.

It was Thomas, standing in the warehouse. Behind him, Gabriel was strapped tightly into an oxygen chamber, unconscious.

“I see you found the tunnel, Elena,” Thomas’s voice came through the speakers. “Come to the pier. Bring the boy. Or I turn up the pressure in Gabriel’s chamber until his lungs collapse.”