Chapter 6 - The Escape Night
Twelve hours earlier, at the secluded, sprawling Blackwood Manor—a forgotten property owned privately by Victoria’s family—the rain had been falling in relentless sheets.
Deep beneath the main house, inside a damp, windowless stone basement that smelled of mildew and rust, Eleanor lay on a thin, soiled mattress. Her once-radiant face was pale and thin, but her eyes held an unyielding strength.
For six agonizing years, Eleanor had been kept prisoner in this subterranean cell. Victoria had used heavy sedatives to keep her weak, visiting once a month to mock her, torment her, and remind her that Adrian now belonged to Victoria.
When Eleanor had given birth to Clara six years ago in that damp cell, Victoria had planned to eliminate the child. But Eleanor had fought like a lioness, threatening to end her own life—the only leverage she had against Victoria, who needed Eleanor alive to access certain locked trust funds that required Eleanor’s biometric signatures every few years.
Six months ago, Eleanor had given birth to her second child, Baby Mia.
Last night, the elderly guard Victoria hired had fallen into a deep alcohol-induced sleep on his chair outside the cell door.
Using a piece of bent wire she had painstakingly scraped against the stone wall for three months, Eleanor had managed to reach through the iron bars and hook the keys hanging from the guard's belt.
She unlocked the cell door, but her body was too weak from years of malnutrition and illness to run. She couldn't walk up the long flight of stairs without collapsing.
"Clara... look at me," Eleanor had whispered, holding her six-year-old daughter’s hands through tears. "You have to take Mia and run. Go to the city center. Find the grand wedding hall near the clock tower. Your father is there."
Eleanor had placed her cherished lion-crest necklace, the old photograph she had hidden in her mattress, and the spare padlock key into Clara’s small hands.
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"Tell your father that I love him," Eleanor had wept, pushing her tiny daughter through the narrow cellar exit grate into the storm. "Tell him I never stopped fighting."
👉 Did Eleanor survive the night after helping her daughters escape from the cell?
