The Sanctuary

Marlo 

I slammed my fists against the heavy door until the skin on my knuckles split.

"Let me out!" I screamed, my voice tearing through my raw throat. "Someone, please! Let me out!"

My frantic cries bounced off the cold walls of the surveillance room, swallowed by the suffocating silence of the underground. I spun around, my back pressing hard against the locked door. My chest heaved, my lungs burning as I stared in absolute horror at the glowing monitors.

On the largest screen, the masked man standing behind Aunt Siobhan hadn't moved. He was just a dark, towering shadow in our small, worn out living room. Siobhan was still calmly sipping her tea, her fragile, silver haired head resting against the back of the sofa, completely unaware that death was standing mere inches away from her.

"Auntie, turn around," I whispered, hot tears spilling down my cheeks. I pressed my hands to my mouth to muffle a sob. "Please, just turn around."

As if the masked man could hear my desperate prayers through the screen, he slowly tilted his head toward the hidden camera. He stared right into the lens. Right at me.

Then, every single monitor in the room went violently pitch black.

The sudden darkness hit me like a physical blow. I let out a choked gasp, my heart struggling wildly against my ribs. I was completely blind.

Clack. Hiss.

A sudden mechanical sound echoed from the far end of the room. The faint glow of emergency lights flickered to life along the baseboards, illuminating a narrow section of the back wall. It wasn't a solid wall at all. A hidden steel panel had just slid open, revealing a long, tunnel sloping upward into the dark.

I didn't know where it led. I didn't care. It was a way out, and I needed to find a phone before that monster in my living room laid a hand on the only family I had left.

I pushed off the door and sprinted into the passage.

The air inside the tunnel was different. It didn't smell like the damp concrete of the athletic center. It smelled like cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and a faint hint of peppermint. The incline was steep, burning my thighs as I ran blindly forward. My cheap sneakers made no sound on the thick, plush carpet. I was leaving the campus entirely. I was running straight toward Port Phillip Bay.

Finally, the tunnel ended at a heavy, dark oak door. I didn't hesitate. I threw my entire body weight against the wood, turning the brass handle.

I stumbled forward, falling to my knees on a thick, dark Persian rug.

I gasped for air, my messy black hair sticking to my tear stained face. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, a heavy, suffocating weight settled over my chest.

I wasn't in a maintenance building. I wasn't in a facility.

I was inside a mansion.

The room was massive, but it felt incredibly claustrophobic. Floor to ceiling bookshelves lined walls painted a deep, bruised charcoal. Heavy velvet drapes were pulled tight over towering windows, locking out the raging snowstorm outside. A massive stone fireplace took up the entire left wall, the dying embers casting a dark orange glow across the room.

It was a sanctuary. But it felt like a beautifully decorated cage.

I slowly pushed myself up from the floor, my legs trembling. My eyes darted around the room, taking in the terrifying luxury. A crystal decanter half filled with amber whiskey sat on a side table next to an armchair. A row of antique hunting knives was displayed behind a glass case.

This was Jarrah’s private estate. The underground tunnel connected his campus locker room directly to his home.

 The Jarrah Vance that everyone at Monash University knew was a brutal, untouchable athlete. A giant who solved his problems with bloody knuckles and shattered ice. But the campus only saw the mask.

Standing in this dark, silent room, I finally saw the real man.

This wasn't the bedroom of a mindless brute. This was the lair of an obsessively organized predator. The heavy silence, the dark colors, the complete isolation it all screamed of a man who watched the world from the shadows, calculating every single move before he struck. He didn't just break bones; he broke lives and he had been watching mine for ten years.

Siobhan.

Panic spiked in my chest again. I couldn't waste time being terrified of Jarrah. I needed to call the police.

"Phone," I muttered out loud, my voice shaking. "Where is a phone?"

I rushed toward the center of the room, my eyes locking onto a massive desk. It was completely clear of clutter, except for a sleek black laptop and a single desk lamp. No landline. No cell phone.

"Damn it!" I sobbed, ripping open the top drawer of the desk. Empty. I pulled open the second drawer. Empty.

 I dropped to my knees, desperate to check underneath the desk for a hidden wire, a panic button, anything. My kneecap hit the floor beneath the heavy rug.

I froze.

The edge of the rug was flipped back slightly from my frantic search. And right there, inches from my bleeding knuckles, the wood didn't look right.

One of the thick floorboards was slightly jarred out of alignment.

My breath caught in my throat. My mind instantly flashed back to the previous night, inside Jarrah's campus study. The loose floorboard. The hidden velvet box. The letters detailing my entire tragic life.

He had a pattern.

My hands shook so violently I could barely control them. Every instinct screamed at me to get up and run for the main door of the house. But the sick, twisting knot of suspense in my gut anchored me to the floor.

I trapped my broken fingernails into the tiny gap between the wood panels. I pulled upward with a little force, the floorboard lifted away, revealing a dark, hollowed out space beneath the foundation.

I didn't find a phone.

I stared down into the hidden compartment, lying in the dust was a single, glossy photograph.

It wasn't a picture of me. It was a picture of the masked man from the surveillance footage.He was standing in a bright, sunlit alleyway, smiling as he accepted a thick envelope of cash and the person handing him the money the person staring back at me in the photograph with a cold, ruthless smile that I had never seen before was my sweet, frail Aunt Siobhan.

Before my shattered brain could even begin to process the betrayal, a heavy, agonizingly slow footstep creaked on the floorboards directly behind me.

"I told you to run, Marlo," Jarrah whispered, wrapping around me in the dark. "But you just couldn't resist digging your own grave.”

My eyes dropped to the photograph still trembling in my hand. Then Jarrah leaned closer. "There's something else you need to know about your aunt.”

"What are you talking about?" For the first time, the darkness disappeared from his eyes. There was something almost like pity in them and that scared me more than his anger ever could. "Your aunt didn't just pay that man." He paused. "She paid him to start the fire."