Chapter 67 - The Decoy Parish
Von Berg’s men were watching every arterial road leading toward 14th Street. By 10:45 AM, three black sedans were already idling outside the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, waiting for our surrender. They had two private notaries and a bishop’s emissary waiting inside with the baptismal register prepared on calfskin parchment.
They never expected us to head west.
Liam drove our battered sedan, taking the back alleyways and commercial delivery routes through the rail yards. In the back seat, Chloe sat cloaked beneath two heavy wool coats, keeping Evelyn warm against her skin, while I kept my eyes fixed on the rearview mirrors, scanning for the telltale glint of European chassis and tinted glass.
"Mom," Liam said through clenched teeth as we crossed the county line into our old suburban township. "The house is condemned. The police tape is still across the driveway. The town inspectors red-tagged the foundation after the furnace breach."
"A red tag is a municipal opinion, Liam," I said coldly. "The foundation was laid with granite blocks quarried in the Alps in 1870. The local fire department doesn't have the tools to condemn that ground."
We pulled into the overgrown alley behind the property at 11:15 AM.
The four-bedroom suburban house I had owned, fought for, and lived in for thirty-six years looked hollow and scarred in the daylight. The front lawn was torn up by heavy tires from the emergency services; the front windows were boarded over with rough plywood. To any passing neighbor, it was an abandoned wreck waiting for the wrecking ball.
To Christian Von Berg, it was a tomb.
"Out," I ordered. "Straight through the cellar bulkhead. Liam, carry Chloe. Don't touch the ground with her bare skin—the snow is three inches deep."
We moved swiftly, ducking beneath the police tape. Liam took Chloe’s weight effortlessly, his face grim, while I unlocked the padlocked storm doors leading down into the subterranean belly of the house.
The smell of cold ash, burnt oil, and damp earth hit us immediately. The basement was dark, save for the narrow shafts of gray daylight filtering through the ground-level grates. In the center of the floor, the heavy iron hearth stood cold and cracked from the thermite charge I had blown weeks ago.
"Why here, Mom?" Liam asked, setting Chloe down gently on an intact wooden crate. "Father Donald said the repudiation has to be on consecrated ground. This is just a basement."
"You think your grandfather Arthur let them build an ordinary basement beneath our dining room?" I walked toward the back wall, where the original brickwork met the limestone bedrock.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the iron key Arthur had given me on our wedding night, and inserted it into a hidden mortar gap four feet above the concrete slab.
With a heavy, grinding groan of counterweights, the entire center section of the floor—the three-ton granite slab beneath the shattered hearth—dropped six inches and slid laterally, revealing a circular stone staircase spiraling down into the darkness.
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From below rose the scent of ancient frankincense and dry cedar.
"This house was built on top of the original mission chapel of 1844," I said, lighting a battery-powered lantern. "Consecrated sixty years before the Swiss ever laid a single brick. Welcome to the true foundation."
