On My First Day at My Husband’s House, My Mother-in-Law Pointed to the Kitchen and Said, “New Daughters-in-Law Eat Downstairs Until They Learn Their Place.” I Nodded and Didn’t Argue. The Next Day, My Husband Invited His Boss to Dinner, Just as He Was Expecting a Promotion. When Everyone Took Their Seats at the Table, I Picked Up My Plate and Repeated Exactly What She Had Ordered Me to Do… and His Boss Asked a Question That Left My Husband Speechless. / Chapter 22 / 40

Chapter 22 - The Oxygen Clock

The air turned razor-thin in seconds.

The carbon dioxide poured from the ceiling valves with a steady, deafening roar, pooling invisible and heavy around our ankles. The temperature inside the vault plunged immediately. My breath billowed white in the harsh glare of Walter’s flashlight.

"George! Sit down!" Walter commanded, coughing violently as he shoved the older man onto a wooden crate. "Don't exert yourself! The more you breathe, the faster your blood acidifies!"

"She’s... she’s really going to kill us," George wheezed, clutching his chest. His lips were already taking on a faint bluish tint under the lantern’s beam. "Forty years... I gave that woman forty years..."

"Save your breath, George," I snapped, adrenaline surging through my veins, hot and sharp. I had not survived eating cold scraps off the floor of this family's mansion just to suffocate in their basement. I had not clawed back my dignity, rebuilt my firm, and uncovered my grandfather’s stolen legacy to die trapped in a hole.

I spun around, pointing the beam of my phone toward the rear of the vault. "Walter! Look at the construction of this room! This wasn't built as a bank vault originally. Look at the stonework behind the steel paneling!"

Walter stumbled over, his chest heaving as he shined his heavy lantern along the seams where the modern steel plates met the foundation. "It’s river rock. Nineteenth-century masonry. The original foundations of the Miller textile mill!"

"The textile mill had water raceways," I coughed, a tight band of iron squeezing around my lungs. My vision was already beginning to tunnel at the edges. "My grandfather wrote about the auxiliary drainage tunnels in his diary! If the cellar floor was built over the raceway, there has to be an inspection hatch!"

"Over here!" Walter wheezed, dropping to his knees near the back wall. He swept aside decades of dry rot and moldy file boxes, revealing a heavy cast-iron circular plate embedded directly into the damp stone floor.

Outside the door, through the muffled ventilation slot, we could hear Julian groaning, followed by the erratic sound of heavy footsteps.

"Mom... stop... you're insane..." Julian’s voice drifted through, slurred and desperate.

"Get up, Julian!" Victoria’s screech was unhinged now. "Get the gasoline from the garden shed! We torch the breaker box outside this door and leave through the kitchen! Move!"

Inside the vault, Walter pulled with all his might on the rusted iron ring of the floor hatch. It didn't budge.

"It’s rusted shut!" Walter choked out, collapsing back onto the floor, his skin gray. "Charlotte... I can't... there's no oxygen..."

The darkness was closing in fast. My lungs burned like raw fire. I dropped my phone, grabbed a heavy iron crowbar from the antique work table, and jammed the wedge beneath the rusted lip of the hatch.