Chapter 4 - The Secrets in the Deep CellarsMarco Rossi’s gaze felt like a physical blow—cold, piercing, and instantly lethal.
Before he could stand up or shout an accusation, Vincent’s voice cut across the room like a whipcrack.
"Grace," Vincent called out, his tone smooth, casual, and dripping with calculated authority. "Refill my glass, please. And see to Mr. Rossi. He looks like he’s about to have a stroke."
The tension in the room snapped back toward Vincent. Rossi swallowed hard, forcing a tight, nervous smile as he quickly slid his satellite phone back inside his jacket pocket.
"Quite right, Moretti," Rossi grunted, clearing his throat. "Your staff needs a bit more training on discretion, though."
"My staff answers to me, Marco," Vincent replied, his dark eyes flashing with a silent warning as I stepped up to his side and poured fresh coffee into his cup. His hand brushed against mine for a fraction of a second—a subtle, grounding touch that told me to keep my composure. "Now, as I was saying about the Rome shipping lanes..."
I backed away slowly, keeping my head bowed until I reached the heavy oak doors, slipping out into the hallway before anyone else could notice my trembling hands.
Once the doors clicked shut behind me, I leaned against the cold wood paneling, sucking in ragged breaths of air.
Phase Two.
The girl in the basement cells.
The words echoed in my mind like a recurring nightmare. Vincent had told me his uncle was responsible for Elena's disappearance seven years ago. But Rossi’s hurried phone call suggested something entirely different—something hidden deep beneath the opulent floors of the Moretti mansion, locked away where sunlight never reached.
Could Elena still be alive?
The thought struck me with the force of a lightning bolt, sending a blinding wave of hope and terror crashing over my chest. For seven years, my family had mourned a ghost. But if there was even a one-percent chance that my sister was locked away in the subterranean dungeons of this monster's house, I didn't care about the risk. I had to find out.
By midnight, the mansion had settled into a deceptive, heavy quiet.
The board members had flown back to Europe, the guards had rotated their shifts, and the dim amber wall sconces cast long, twisting shadows down the empty corridors.
I slipped out of my tiny servant's room on the third floor, wearing dark leggings and a fitted black turtleneck, moving with absolute silence. I had spent the afternoon discreetly observing the movements of the estate staff and memorizing the architectural layout of the subterranean service tunnels—blueprints I had spotted on a clipboard in the maintenance office.
The entrance to the deep cellars was hidden behind a heavy iron-reinforced door disguised as a walk-in wine cellar in the basement.
Using a master keycard I had quietly lifted from an unattended maintenance cart earlier that evening, I swiped the reader beside the wine rack.
Click.
The heavy lock disengaged with a soft mechanical sigh.
I pulled the door open, and a wave of damp, stale air rushed up to meet me—smelling of wet stone, old dust, and iron. I flicked on the small flashlight app on my burner phone, casting a weak beam of white light down a steep, winding flight of concrete stairs that vanished into the absolute dark.
Every step I took downward felt like walking deeper into a tomb. The silence was absolute, broken only by the distant, rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the stone foundations.
At the bottom of the stairs stretched a narrow corridor lined with heavy iron-barred doors. Each cell was marked with a faded metal plaque containing alphanumeric codes. This wasn't a wine cellar. It was a black-site prison built by the Moretti syndicate to hold high-value enemies, leverage politicians, and bury secrets that could never see the light of day.
I crept down the corridor, shining my phone light through the small iron grates of each cell.
Cell 101: Empty, rusted chains hanging from the wall.
Cell 102: Empty, a rotting mattress on the floor.
Cell 103: Empty.
Panic began to claw at my throat. Was Rossi’s mention of "the girl in the basement cells" just a ghost story? A bluff?
Then I reached the very end of the corridor, where a reinforced steel door—not an iron bar—sealed off the final enclosure. A digital keypad flickered with a dim red light beside the heavy handle.
As I stepped closer, a faint sound drifted out from beneath the steel door.
A cough.
Weak, rattling, and agonizingly human.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I dropped to my knees, pressing my ear directly against the cold steel of the door.
"Hello?" I whispered, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "Is someone in there?"
Silence for a long moment. Then, a slow, shuffling sound against the concrete floor inside, followed by a trembling, fragile voice that nearly stopped my heart entirely.
"Grace...?"
The name wasn't spoken by a stranger. It was a voice I hadn't heard in seven years, distorted by starvation and suffering, but unmistakably, undeniably my sister.
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"Elena!" I cried out, my hands slamming against the steel door. "Oh, God, Elena, it's me! You're alive!"
"Grace, you shouldn't be here," Elena sobbed from the darkness inside, her voice breaking into a violent fit of coughing. "You have to run... Vincent... Vincent is lying to you. He didn't save me... he's the one who kept me here all along!"
