Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
For three seconds, Sebastian Romano couldn't move.
His father's two words seemed to hang in the air above the open servants' passage.
Your mother.
Twelve years earlier, Elena Romano had supposedly died in a fire at the family's lake house. Sebastian had been twenty-four, old enough to understand death but young enough to believe the official report his father had signed.
The funeral had been closed-casket.
Antonio had refused to discuss the accident.
And Vanessa Sterling, who had entered the Romano household two years later as a financial adviser, had gradually become the woman Sebastian trusted with nearly everything his father could no longer manage.
Now Antonio was pointing at a cellar and insisting Elena was alive.
"Get my security team," Sebastian ordered.
His head of security, Marcus Bell, appeared from the corridor with two guards.
"Nobody leaves this house," Sebastian continued. "Nobody touches a phone, deletes a recording, or moves a single object. Call an ambulance for Clara, and bring the cellar keys."
Vanessa grabbed his sleeve.
"You're letting an old man's confusion destroy our future."
Sebastian looked at her hand until she released him.
"Our future can wait."
"What about our wedding?"
"If Margaret is down there, there won't be a wedding until I know why."
Her expression hardened.
"You think I did something to that nurse because your father pointed at a staircase? Sebastian, listen to yourself."
"I am listening. For the first time, I'm listening to everyone."
Marcus returned with a ring of keys taken from the estate manager's office. None fitted the cellar lock.
Vanessa watched them try.
Then she said, too quickly, "That cellar hasn't been used since your mother died."
Sebastian turned.
"How do you know? You told me you never went near the servants' passage."
Vanessa's mouth opened, but no answer came.
Antonio struck his wheelchair armrest again.
Three times this time.
Marcus found a narrow iron key taped beneath the underside of the passage's wooden railing. He inserted it into the lock.
The door opened with a grinding groan.
Cold air rose from the darkness.
Sebastian took a flashlight and descended the first six steps. Marcus followed with his weapon drawn.
"Margaret?" Sebastian called.
No answer.
At the bottom, the staircase opened into a cramped storage room. Broken furniture stood against the walls. An old furnace occupied one corner, and beyond it sat a second door secured with a heavy bolt.
Something scraped behind it.
Sebastian approached.
"Who's in there?"
A woman's voice answered, hoarse and weak.
"Sebastian?"
He stopped breathing.
He knew that voice.
He had heard it in childhood lullabies, at birthday dinners, and through the bedroom door on nights when his father and mother argued.
"Mom?"
A sob came from behind the door.
"Please. Get me out."
Marcus cut the bolt with a portable tool from his security kit. The metal snapped, and the door swung inward.
A thin woman sat on a narrow mattress, wrapped in a gray blanket. Her silver-streaked hair hung around a face that was older, thinner, and more fragile than the one Sebastian remembered.
But the small crescent-shaped scar beneath her left eyebrow was unmistakable.
Elena Romano.
His mother.
Alive.
Sebastian dropped to his knees.
"Mom?"
She reached for his face with trembling fingers.
"My beautiful boy."
He embraced her, unable to stop shaking.
For twelve years, he had carried flowers to a grave that held no body. He had spent his life becoming the kind of man nobody could threaten, convinced that power could prevent another loss.
Yet his mother had been beneath his own house.
For how long, he couldn't imagine.
Then Elena clutched his shirt.
"Don't let Vanessa take me."
Sebastian looked up.
"What did she do?"
Elena glanced toward the staircase.
"She told me you knew."
"Knew what?"
"That I wasn't dead."
The room seemed to tilt.
Before Sebastian could ask another question, a gunshot cracked upstairs.
Marcus grabbed Sebastian's shoulder.
"Down!"
The light above the staircase disappeared.
Someone had cut the power.
From the darkness, Vanessa's voice drifted down through the open passage.
"Sebastian, darling? You need to come upstairs."
Elena began trembling violently.
"Don't answer her," she whispered.
"Why?"
His mother's eyes filled with terror.
"Because she's not the one who put me here."
Then, from somewhere behind the furnace, another door clicked shut.
And a man's voice spoke from the darkness.
"That's enough, Elena."
Sebastian recognized the voice immediately.
It belonged to the only person he had trusted to protect his mother twelve years earlier.
His father's younger brother.
May you like
Uncle Dominic.
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