Chapter 3 - THE TUNNEL BENEATH MY HOUSE
Emergency lights flooded the mansion in red.
I grabbed Sofia before she could run blindly toward the staircase.
“My daughter!”
“We’ll find her.”
“Let me go!”
“Sofia!”
She struck my chest with both hands.
“Isabella!”
So that was the little girl’s name.
Seven years old.
Dark curls.
Brown eyes.
Brave enough to accuse Renata while surrounded by armed men.
And now she had vanished inside my home.
Dominic appeared from the eastern corridor.
“We found the guard assigned to the upstairs hall. Unconscious, breathing normally.”
“Cameras?”
“Three loops were inserted into the internal feed.”
“By who?”
“We’re tracing it.”
Sofia went still.
“Renata.”
Dominic looked at her.
“There’s no way she could have accessed the control system.”
“Yes, there is.”
Sofia turned toward me.
“Renata worked here before the massacre.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Different name. Different hair. But I remembered her voice three weeks ago.”
Dominic swore.
“What name?”
“Marina Costa.”
I knew that one too.
A young kitchen assistant had supposedly died fifteen years ago.
Another body never properly identified because of the fire.
Sofia grabbed my sleeve.
“She knows the old service passages.”
I understood immediately.
The mansion where I lived now had been rebuilt on the foundations of the original Duca estate.
Many sections were new.
The tunnels beneath it were not.
“Wine cellar,” I said.
Sofia nodded.
We ran.
Nero stayed ahead of us.
Behind one rack of expensive bottles was a stone wall I had not opened in years.
My father used the tunnels during Prohibition-era restoration work, or so I had been told.
Sofia found the release before I did.
A stone shifted.
Cold air rushed out.
The tunnel beyond smelled exactly the way my nightmares did.
Wet earth.
Smoke that existed only in memory.
I stopped.
For fifteen years, I had refused to enter that passage.
Sofia looked back at me.
“You don’t have to come.”
Something about those words angered me.
“My house. My enemy. Your daughter.”
I stepped inside.
“I’m coming.”
We moved through darkness.
Nero tracked ahead.
Then we heard it.
A child crying.
Sofia ran.
“Isabella!”
The tunnel opened into an old storage chamber.
Renata stood beside another exit.
Her hand clamped around Isabella’s shoulder.
The girl’s cheeks were wet.
“Mommy!”
Sofia surged forward.
Renata pulled Isabella backward.
“Stay there.”
I stepped between Sofia and Renata.
“No one is taking that child anywhere.”
Renata laughed shakily.
“You think this is about her?”
“Release her.”
“You were supposed to send Sofia outside.”
“And then?”
“Cars were waiting.”
My voice lowered.
“You opened my gate.”
“I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
Renata’s face twisted.
“You say that because you were born a Duca.”
Sofia whispered, “You helped kill them.”
Renata looked at her.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was twenty-two and stupid.”
Her voice broke.
“Emilio told me he wanted documents. He said nobody would get hurt.”
Sofia stared at her.
“You locked the west kitchen door.”
Renata looked away.
My stomach turned.
That door had been one of the exits my mother tried to reach.
I remembered her screaming from the other side.
Renata continued.
“I didn’t know what he planned.”
“You knew afterward,” Sofia said.
“Yes.”
“And you kept working for him.”
Renata’s eyes filled.
“He owned me afterward.”
Nobody spoke.
The tragedy of guilt did not make innocence.
But fear explained many ugly loyalties.
“Why Isabella?” I asked.
Renata swallowed.
“Emilio said if I brought the girl, he’d let me disappear.”
Sofia’s voice became deadly calm.
“You believed him?”
Renata began crying.
“No.”
For the first time, I understood.
This was not escape.
It was desperation.
She knew Emilio would kill everyone who knew too much.
Including her.
Nero growled.
Something moved beyond the far tunnel.
A man stepped from the shadows.
Then another.
Emilio’s people had gotten inside.
I moved immediately.
“Dominic!”
My security chief and two guards emerged behind us.
The chamber became chaos.
Orders.
Movement.
A child screaming.
Nero barking.
I reached Isabella before either intruder could.
I pulled her behind me while Dominic’s men forced the others back.
Nobody fired.
Too enclosed.
Too much risk.
Sofia grabbed Isabella and collapsed against the stone wall, covering her daughter’s head with her body.
Renata tried to run.
Dominic caught her.
Three minutes later, both intruders were restrained.
Emilio was not among them.
I knelt beside Isabella.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head furiously.
“No.”
“Did anyone touch you?”
“Renata pulled me.”
The housekeeper closed her eyes.
Isabella suddenly pointed.
“She was crying.”
Everyone looked at Renata.
The child continued.
“She kept saying she was sorry.”
Sofia hugged her tighter.
That didn’t absolve Renata.
But it told me something.
She might still be useful.
Back upstairs, I ordered everyone separated.
Emilio and the remaining men had retreated from the property during the confusion.
For the first time in fifteen years, Emilio Santoro had run from me.
That alone told me the truth mattered more than his reputation.
At two in the morning, Renata sat across from me in the library.
Dominic stood behind her.
Sofia sat beside me.
Isabella slept upstairs under guard.
“What does Emilio want?” I asked.
Renata stared at the table.
“The recording.”
“What recording?”
“Your father’s.”
Sofia frowned.
“The clock only had a key.”
Renata nodded.
“Because the key opens something else.”
“Where?”
Renata looked at me.
“The family chapel.”
My father had built a private chapel behind the old estate.
It survived the massacre because it stood beyond the main house.
We had restored it but rarely used it.
“What’s there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Emilio never found it.”
For the first time, hope flickered across her face.
“That’s why he kept me here all these years. He thought someday someone would return looking for whatever your father hid.”
Sofia.
He had been waiting for her.
Renata recognized her.
Then set the trap.
I looked at Sofia.
“Why take a job here?”
She hesitated.
“I wasn’t running anymore.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“My husband died three years ago.”
I said nothing.
“He was a reporter. Daniel Harper.”
I knew the name.
Investigative journalist.
Car crash.
Officially accidental.
Sofia looked directly at me.
“He found Emilio’s name in an old financial case.”
My stomach dropped.
“You think Emilio killed him.”
“I know he did.”
She reached inside her sleeve and removed a folded photograph.
Daniel Harper standing beside a courthouse.
Behind him, partially reflected in a glass door, was Emilio.
The picture was dated two days before Daniel died.
“I came back because I was done losing people.”
Her voice shook.
“I thought if I could find what your father hid, I could end this.”
I stared at her.
“You brought Isabella into the house of the man who murdered your husband?”
“I brought her into the most protected house in the state.”
“That protection almost failed tonight.”
Pain crossed her face.
“I know.”
I regretted the words immediately.
Before I could apologize, Dominic’s phone rang.
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“We have movement at the chapel.”
“How many?”
“Unknown.”
Renata suddenly stood.
“Then you’re too late.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Emilio already knows about the key.”
My blood ran cold.
“How?”
Renata began shaking.
May you like
“Because I told him fifteen years ago.”
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