Chapter 7 - ASHES AND TRUTH
"Matthias!"
My trauma training overrode the agony in my back and the screaming protests of my swollen body. I lunged forward into the filthy, scalding water before Detective Miller could grab my arm.
"Serena, stay back!" Miller roared, but I was already on my knees beside the furnace.
The steam pipe had pinned Matthias’s torso against the concrete foundation. His face was barely above the oily waterline, his skin mottled with severe burns, his breathing shallow and rattling. The smell of scorched fabric and singed flesh mingled with the suffocating diesel fumes.
"Miller, lift the bracket!" I ordered, my voice dropping into the cold, clinical register I had used during hundreds of ER resuscitations. "Use the pry bar! Lift on three! One, two, three!"
Miller shoved the iron bar under the fallen pipe and levered his entire muscular frame against it. The pipe groaned and shifted four inches upward.
I hooked my arms beneath Matthias’s shoulders and pulled with everything I had. My abdominal muscles tore with a white-hot spasm of pain, and our unborn daughter kicked violently, but I didn't stop. I dragged my husband out from beneath the crushing weight, pulling his head and chest onto the dry landing of the cellar steps.
"I’ve got him," Miller grunted, letting the pipe crash back into the water. He scooped Matthias under the arms while I supported his burned head, and together we hauled him up the stone stairs into the grand foyer.
The mansion above was pandemonium.
The exterior blast doors were standing wide open, letting in the freezing night air and swirling snow. Flashing red and blue lights from a dozen emergency vehicles painted the high vaulted ceilings of the Dre estate. Paramedics from Greenwich EMS were already swarming the ballroom, wrapping shivering guests in foil shock blankets and escorting them out into the blizzard.
Arthur Dre sat slumped on the bottom step of the staircase, completely broken, being attended to by two state troopers.
Across the foyer, Fiona Vale was in handcuffs. A female trooper was reading her Miranda rights while pulling the diamond choker from her neck and dropping it into an evidence bag. Fiona wasn't sneering anymore; she was weeping uncontrollably, her designer gown ruined by soot and mud.
"Over here!" Miller bellowed to the triage team. "Severe third-degree burns to the upper extremities and chest! Possible crush injury to the thoracic spine!"
Four paramedics sprinted over with a stretcher, trauma kits rattling.
I collapsed onto a nearby velvet bench, gasping for air, clutching my stomach. My burgundy dress was soaked in black fuel oil and soot. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely clasp them together.
"Ma'am, you need to lie down," a young paramedic said, rushing to my side with a blood pressure cuff and a portable fetal Doppler monitor. "You're thirty-two weeks?"
"Thirty-two," I breathed, tears finally cutting clean tracks through the grime on my face. "Check the baby. Please. Check her heartbeat first."
The paramedic squirted cold blue gel onto my lower abdomen and pressed the small ultrasound wand against my skin.
For ten agonizing seconds, the only sound was the chaotic shouting of emergency workers and the hiss of oxygen tanks.
Then, loud and rhythmic, the steady gallop filled the room: Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
"Strong heart rate. One hundred and forty-eight beats per minute," the paramedic smiled gently, brushing a damp strand of hair from my forehead. "Your daughter is a fighter, Mrs. Dre."
I let out a sob of pure relief, pressing my face into my hands.
On the stretcher ten feet away, Matthias groaned. His eyes fluttered open beneath the plastic oxygen mask. His blistered, blackened right hand reached out blindly across the stretcher sheet.
"Serena..." his voice was a raspy whisper beneath the plastic dome.
I stood up, ignoring the paramedic's protest, and walked over to his side. I took his trembling, uninjured fingers in mine.
"The baby?" he wheezed, his eyes searching mine through tears of pain.
"She's fine, Matthias. She's strong."
Matthias closed his eyes, a ragged breath escaping his chest. "I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, Serena. For everything. The lies... Fiona... I was so desperate to prove to my father that I wasn't nothing."
"You almost made yourself into nothing tonight, Matthias," I said quietly, holding his hand firmly. "You don't prove your worth to an empire by destroying your family."
Before he could answer, the paramedics wheeled the stretcher toward the open front doors into the falling snow.
I turned back toward the grand hall.
Eleanor Dre was standing near the fireplace, flanked by two plainclothes detectives. She wasn't resisting. Her head was held high, but when her eyes met mine, the guilt in them was bottomless.
"Serena," Eleanor whispered as Detective Miller approached her with a pair of steel cuffs.
"Why, Eleanor?" I asked, my voice steady despite the trembling in my knees. "You claimed you wanted to protect me. You claimed you wanted to save your grandchild. But you rigged that furnace knowing the entire family was inside."
Eleanor looked down at her hands, the silver pocket watch still clutched in her frail fingers.
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"I didn't rig the valve to kill everyone, Serena," Eleanor said, her voice hollow and dead. "I rigged the valve because thirty years ago tonight, Arthur murdered my brother to inherit this firm."
Arthur’s head snapped up from the bottom of the stairs. His face went entirely gray.
