Chapter 2 - The Woman Behind the Bookcase
For several seconds, Dominic Moretti didn't move.
Forty dinner guests watched him stand beneath the crystal chandelier, holding an invoice that had just torn apart everything he believed about his father's death.
Then he turned to Marcus.
“Clear the room.”
The security chief nodded.
“Everyone?”
“Everyone except Vanessa, Elena, and the contractor.”
Chairs scraped against marble. Guests gathered their coats and hurried toward the ballroom doors, whispering behind raised hands. Nobody wanted to be the last person in a mansion where the owner had just discovered a possible prisoner behind a wall.
Vanessa seized Dominic's sleeve.
“You can't do this in front of them. We can discuss it privately.”
He removed her hand.
“You had two years to discuss it privately.”
Her eyes widened.
“Dominic, please.”
He looked at the contractor.
“What's your name?”
“Arthur Bell, sir. I've maintained properties in this neighborhood for thirty years.”
“Can you take us to the door?”
Arthur glanced nervously at Vanessa.
“Yes. But I should tell you something first. When I replaced the lock, I heard the woman speaking through the door. She wasn't asking to be rescued.”
Dominic frowned.
“What was she asking for?”
Arthur swallowed.
“A telephone. And a newspaper.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Dominic noticed.
“Why would a prisoner ask for a newspaper?”
“Because,” Arthur said, “she wanted to know whether you were still alive.”
Dominic turned toward the library.
“Marcus, bring two men. Nobody enters that room until I say so.”
Elena stepped forward.
“Mr. Moretti?”
He looked at her.
“You should go home.”
“Of course, sir. But there's something you need to know about the invoice.”
Dominic's patience was wearing thin.
“What now?”
“The contractor's company stamped the original work order. I checked the business registration this afternoon because the payment came from an account that had been closed.”
Arthur stared at her.
“You checked the company?”
“I only wanted to make sure the bill was legitimate.”
Dominic studied Elena. She wasn't smiling. She wasn't trying to impress him. Her attention remained on the evidence.
“Whose account paid for the work?” he asked.
“Your father's private estate account.”
Dominic's expression hardened.
“That account was frozen after his death.”
“According to the bank's public filing, yes.”
Vanessa suddenly stepped between them.
“Enough. Elena is a maid, not an investigator. She's twisting ordinary paperwork into some ridiculous conspiracy.”
Elena lowered her eyes.
“I'm sorry if I've overstepped, ma'am.”
The apology sounded so sincere that Vanessa seemed momentarily confused.
Then Dominic spoke.
“She's the only person here who brought me evidence instead of excuses.”
He walked toward the library.
The east wing was colder than the rest of the mansion. Dust covered the portraits, and the tall windows had been sealed from the inside. Dominic remembered being forbidden to enter this corridor as a boy.
His father had called it the private wing.
His mother had called it the place where the family kept its ghosts.
Dominic had never asked what she meant.
Inside the library, Marcus moved a heavy ladder away from the bookcase. Arthur examined the shelves, then pressed a small brass ornament beside a row of leather-bound volumes.
A quiet click sounded behind the wall.
The bookcase shifted less than an inch.
Dominic stared.
“My father built a room inside his own library?”
“Not built,” Arthur said. “Concealed. The original plans showed a service passage here. Someone converted it into a chamber years ago.”
Marcus helped move the bookcase aside.
Beyond it stood a narrow blue door, its paint faded and cracked. A modern deadbolt gleamed against the old wood.
Dominic inserted the brass key.
It wouldn't turn.
Arthur examined the lock.
“That's why I kept the original. The replacement cylinder was installed backward. Someone wanted the door secure from both sides.”
“Can you open it?”
Arthur worked carefully with his tools.
A minute passed.
Then another.
From the other side came three faint knocks.
Dominic stepped closer.
“Who's in there?”
Silence.
He knocked twice.
“I'm Dominic Moretti.”
A woman's voice answered, so faint he almost missed it.
“No.”
Dominic went still.
The voice continued.
“Dominic Moretti is dead.”
Vanessa began crying behind him.
Arthur finally released the lock.
The deadbolt slid back.
Dominic placed his hand on the door.
“I'm opening it.”
A whisper came through the wood.
“If you're really Dominic, tell me what your mother used to call you when you were afraid of thunderstorms.”
Dominic's fingers tightened.
Only one person outside his family had ever heard that nickname.
A woman he had believed dead for twenty years.
He leaned toward the door.
“Little lion.”
The room fell silent.
Then the woman began to sob.
Dominic opened the door.
Inside stood a thin, gray-haired woman wearing a faded blue dress. Her wrists were bruised, her hair hung unevenly around her face, and she clutched a photograph against her chest.
Dominic couldn't breathe.
The photograph showed him as a six-year-old boy sitting on a woman's lap.
The woman was his mother.
Margaret Moretti.
The woman who had supposedly died in a car accident when Dominic was eight.
She looked up at him.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I'm sorry, sweetheart.”
Dominic stumbled backward.
“No.”
She reached for him.
He stared at her hands, at the scar across her left thumb, at the small gold ring she still wore on a chain around her neck.
His mother's ring.
He had buried an empty coffin.
For twenty years, he had believed the lie.
Then Margaret looked past him, toward Vanessa.
Her face changed.
“Dominic,” she whispered, “you mustn't let her touch the blue folder.”
Vanessa lunged toward the doorway.
Marcus caught her arm.
May you like
And from somewhere inside the hidden chamber, a telephone began to ring.
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