Chapter 5 - THE GUESTS IN THE DINING ROOM
“Elena,” Dominic growled into the darkness.
“You always were too sentimental, Dominic,” Elena’s voice crackled through the speaker. “You spent ten years looking for the accountant’s brat to pay a debt you didn’t owe. It took me a week to find her. And all I had to do was hire her to clean your floors.”
I covered my mouth to muffle a sob.
This wasn’t a coincidence. I hadn’t just applied for a job. Elena had orchestrated it. She had pushed me into this house just to use me as a pawn.
“The men in your dining room, Dominic?” Elena continued smoothly. “They aren’t here to sign a waterfront deal. They’re my men. And they’ve just secured the house.”
Dominic reached into his pocket and pulled out a small tactical flashlight. The beam cut through the dark vault.
“If you touch her daughter, Elena, I will burn you alive.”
Elena laughed. “The little girl is safe. For now. Marcus failed to get me the blueprints. So you’re going to give them to me, Dominic. You’re going to sign over the shipping ports. Or my men will execute your staff one by one. Starting with the cute little doctor upstairs.”
The intercom clicked off.
Dominic didn’t panic. He moved with a terrifying, mechanical efficiency.
He walked to the back of the vault, pushing aside a stack of heavy wooden crates.
“Are we trapped?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“This is my house, Emma. Nobody traps me in my own house.”
Dominic pressed his hand against a specific brick on the back wall. There was a loud click, and a section of the wall swung open, revealing a narrow, pitch-black tunnel.
“The service shafts,” Dominic said. “They run behind the walls of the entire estate.”
He turned to me. The flashlight illuminated his face. The mafia boss was gone. The man looking at me now was fiercely protective.
“Emma, I need you to listen to me. Elena thinks she has the upper hand. She doesn’t know about this tunnel. We are going to get out of this house, we are going to go to the old shipyard, and we are going to get Lily back. Do you trust me?”
I looked at the blood on my shoe. I looked at the dead man on the floor.
I thought of my mother.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Good.” Dominic reached out and took my hand. His grip was warm and solid. “Don’t let go.”
We slipped into the narrow tunnel.
It was dusty and suffocating. My ankle screamed with every step, but I bit my lip and kept moving. We crept through the walls, listening to the heavy footsteps of Elena’s men echoing through the hallways outside.
We reached a grate that looked out into Dominic’s private study.
Dominic peeked through the slats.
“Clear,” he whispered.
He popped the grate open, and we climbed into the study.
Dominic immediately went to the massive fireplace. He reached up inside the chimney and pulled down a heavy, metal lockbox.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The real reason Elena killed your mother,” Dominic said, punching a code into the box.
It clicked open. Inside wasn’t money. It was an old, leather-bound book.
“The ledger,” Dominic said. “Your mother hid it before they got to her. It proves Elena stole fifty million dollars from the syndicate’s bosses. If this book sees the light of day, Elena is a dead woman. That’s why she wants the shipping ports. To buy her way back into their good graces.”
Suddenly, the study doors burst open.
Two men in dark suits stepped into the room, raising assault rifles.
But it wasn't just the two men.
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One of them was holding a gun to the head of Daniel, the young security guard who had escorted me upstairs earlier. Daniel was bleeding from his forehead, his hands zip-tied behind his back.
“Drop the gun, Valenti,” the lead man said. “Elena says thank you for finding the ledger. Now kick it over, or the guard dies. And the little girl in the boathouse drowns.”
