The Billionaire They Buried

Chapter 12: Trapped

Someone was inside the room with me. I couldn't see who — the shelves were too tall, and the lights flickered every few seconds, My heart pounded against my ribs. "Who's there?" No answer. The footsteps had already stopped, like whoever it was had heard the question and decided it didn't deserve one.

I glanced back at the door and pulled the handle again — still locked. I hit it with my fist. "Open the door!" Nothing came back but silence, and somehow that silence was worse than any answer could have been. I forced myself to take a slow breath, Whoever was hiding in here wanted me to panic, wanted me scrambling loud and easy to find. I wasn't going to make that easy for them.

I reached for the wooden mop handle leaning against the wall. It wasn't much — a length of splintered wood against whatever had been sent in here for me — but it beat standing there with empty hands. The room went quiet again, too quiet, the kind of stillness that felt deliberate rather than empty. Then a metal wrench clattered onto the floor somewhere behind the shelves, the sound echoing off the concrete, and I turned toward it before I could stop myself.

That was the mistake. Something rushed at me from my left, a shoulder slamming into my chest before I had time to react, and the force threw me back into a stack of cardboard boxes that scattered and collapsed under me. Pain shot through my back where I hit the floor. I rolled away just as a heavy boot came down where my head had been a second earlier, and scrambled up fast, gripping the mop handle with both hands like it might actually be enough.

The man stepped into the light — taller than me, broad-shouldered, a shaved head and a prison uniform that looked two sizes too small for the frame underneath it, a deep scar cutting across his forehead like something that had healed wrongly a long time ago. He smiled. "So you're the billionaire." I said nothing. He cracked his neck slowly, almost bored. "I expected someone tougher," and lunged before I could answer that either.

I swung the handle and caught his forearm with a sharp crack that should have meant something, but he barely reacted — just grabbed the wood and ripped it out of my hands, snapping it in two like it was a toy. My stomach dropped. This man didn't come to scare me. Whoever had sent him wanted something finished.

He tossed the broken wood aside and came at me again. I ducked under his swing and drove my shoulder into his stomach, and he staggered back —he moved one step close before his fist crashed into my jaw hard enough that the room spun and blood filled my mouth. He grabbed my shirt and slammed me against the wall, forearm pressed into my throat, close enough that I could smell stale cigarettes on his breath and feel the full weight of him pinning me there.

"You should've stopped digging."

The words sent a chill through me colder than the fear already sitting in my chest. He knew about the note. He was working for whoever had sent it, which meant this wasn't random and it wasn't personal — it was a message with my name already written on it. I drove my knee up with everything I had left, and he grunted and loosened his grip just enough — enough that I shoved him off and stumbled toward the door, pounding on it with both fists. "Help!" No one answered. Not a guard. Not another inmate. Not a single sound from the other side of that door, and the realization landed harder than his fist had. This had been arranged. The room chosen ahead of time. The door locked on purpose. Whoever was supposed to be protecting me had simply stepped aside and let it happen.

Behind me, slow footsteps started again. I turned to find him pulling a length of steel pipe out from beneath a shelf, smiling like he had all the time in the world to finish what he started. "You've got heart," he said. "But heart won't save you." He swung, and I threw myself sideways as the pipe smashed into a metal cabinet, sending sparks flying across the floor. I grabbed the wrench off the concrete and held it up between us, and for a few seconds neither of us moved, just watched each other across the wreckage of boxes and broken wood.

"That's better," he said, almost approving, like I finally earned something from him. "Now you look like a man fighting to stay alive."

A whistle cut through the building before he could come at me again. His expression shifted instantly — heavy footsteps thundering down the hallway outside, guards, getting closer by the second. He glanced at the door, then back at me, weighing something I couldn't read. "This isn't over," he said, and dropped the pipe, disappearing behind the storage shelves with a speed that didn't match a man his size at all.

A second later the lock clicked, and the door burst open. Two correctional officers rushed in, taking in the scattered boxes, the broken mop, the blood on my lip, and the wrench still gripped in my hand. "What happened here?"

I almost laughed at that — he was asking like he didn't already know the answer, like this whole thing hadn't been arranged by someone wearing the same uniform he was. I wiped the blood off my mouth slowly, buying myself a second to decide how much to say. "That's exactly what I would like to know."

The two officers exchanged a glance, quick enough that most people would have missed it entirely. I didn't.

Whatever had just happened to me in that room, at least one of them already knew the truth of it — and had walked in here fully prepared to lie about it anyway.