Chapter 2 - THE ROOM BENEATH THE SOIL
The ceiling above us groaned as the heavy wooden bench scraped across the floorboards.
A thin line of dust fell onto my forehead. I stood motionless on the narrow stone stair, one arm supporting Lorenzo’s weight, the other pressed against my daughter’s back. Emma stayed remarkably still, her face buried against my thigh, holding her breath just as I had taught her during our quiet games in the maid's quarters.
Above us, the footsteps paused directly over the hidden trapdoor.
“He couldn't have gone far,” a voice growled. It belonged to Marco, Lorenzo’s head of personal security—the man who was supposed to stand between his boss and any bullet in the state. “The blood trail ends near the azalea bushes. Check the boundary fence.”
“What about the maid’s quarters?” another man asked.
“The girl and her kid are asleep,” Marco replied, his tone dismissive. “Focus on the perimeter. If Lorenzo survives the night, none of us see tomorrow.”
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Marco.
The man who had eaten dinner in the staff kitchen four hours ago, laughing about his daughter's soccer match, was the one orchestrating the assassination of his employer.
The footsteps finally retreated, fading into the steady drumbeat of the rain outside.
I let out a long, silent breath and turned my focus to the man leaning against me. Lorenzo’s body was burning hot, yet he was shivering violently. His breath came in shallow, ragged rasps.
“They’re gone,” I whispered.
Lorenzo didn't answer. His head slouched forward against my shoulder, his consciousness slipping away.
“Lorenzo!” I shook his shoulder gently. “Stay with me. You promised.”
“I didn't… promise,” he gritted out, his voice barely a rasp. “I just… didn't argue.”
I guided him down the remaining twelve steps. My phone’s flashlight illuminated a cold, stone-walled bunker that looked as though it hadn't been entered in thirty years.
The air was thick with the scent of dry dust, old paper, and motor oil. In the center sat an old iron cot equipped with a moth-eaten wool blanket, a steel workbench, and several metal supply trunks stacked along the back wall.
I eased Lorenzo onto the cot. He let out a low groan as his back hit the mattress, his face turning an alarming shade of gray under the harsh beam of my phone light.
“Emma,” I said, keeping my voice calm and steady. “Bring me the lantern from the workbench.”
Emma immediately scampered across the room, carrying the small battery-operated lamp with both hands like it was a sacred relic. “Is Mr. Lorenzo going to go to sleep forever?”
“No,” I said firmly, setting the lantern on a crate beside the cot. “Not under my watch.”
I stripped off my heavy canvas jacket and folded it into a makeshift pillow beneath his head. Then I turned to the task I had avoided while on the stairs: examining the wound.
The bullet had entered the right side of his torso, just below the rib cage. I pulled his ruined silk shirt aside. The flesh around the entry point was torn and blackened, but when I carefully rolled him slightly onto his side, my heart leaped.
An exit wound.
Clean, jagged, and bleeding freely near his lower back. The bullet hadn't stayed inside to shatter his spine or shred his internal organs, but the blood loss was severe.
“I need supplies,” I muttered, looking around the subterranean room.
“Check… green trunk,” Lorenzo rasped, his eyes fluttering open. “My father… was paranoid. He kept… medical kits in every safe room.”
I rushed over to the heavy green military chest in the corner, flipping open the rusty latches. Inside sat sealed medical packs from two decades ago, alongside several boxes of ammunition, a shortwave radio, and four bottles of high-proof bourbon.
I grabbed the trauma kit, a bottle of bourbon, and a clean roll of gauze.
“This is going to burn,” I warned him, opening the bottle.
Lorenzo managed a ghastly, blood-stained smile. “I’m used to it.”
I poured the alcohol directly over the wound. Lorenzo’s entire frame convulsed, his hands gripping the metal frame of the cot so hard the iron groaned under his weight. A guttural sound ripped from his throat, but he kept it muffled behind clenched teeth.
Emma squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her stuffed rabbit over her ears.
For the next twenty minutes, my nursing instincts took over completely. I cleaned the entry and exit wounds, packed them with sterile gauze, and applied a tight pressure bandage using the elastic wraps from his father's old kit. My hands moved with a swift, mechanical precision I hadn't felt since leaving the hospital wards three years ago.
When I finally finished, my apron was covered in his blood, and my arms were trembling from exhaustion.
Lorenzo lay back against my folded jacket, his breathing slightly more even, though his pulse remained dangerously elevated.
“You’re… not just a maid,” he whispered, his dark eyes searching my face in the dim lamplight.
“I was a second-year nursing student before my husband’s medical bills ate everything we owned,” I replied, wiping my hands on a towel. “Now I clean your floors so my daughter has a roof over her head.”
He looked past me at Emma, who was sitting on a wooden crate, carefully placing another cartoon bear bandage onto his shoe.
“Your daughter… saved my life,” Lorenzo said quietly. “If she hadn't come into the garden…”
“She was looking for her lost rabbit,” I said gently, crouching beside Emma and smoothing her damp curls. “She didn't know she was stepping into a war.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened, the vulnerability vanishing instantly beneath the cold, ruthless demeanor that had made him the most feared boss in the state.
“It’s not a war,” he said, his voice dropping into an icy register that made the room feel ten degrees colder. “It’s an execution. Marco didn't act alone. He doesn't have the spine for it.”
“Who ordered it?” I asked.
Before Lorenzo could answer, a metallic click echoed through the underground room.
Not from the ceiling above us.
From the dark corridor at the far end of the bunker.
I grabbed Emma and pulled her behind my back, my eyes locking onto the shadows beyond the lantern’s reach.
Lorenzo reached for his belt, but his holster was empty.
From the darkness, a woman’s voice spoke—smooth, elegant, and chillingly familiar.
May you like
“I was wondering when you’d find your father’s little hiding spot, Lorenzo.”
***
