Chapter 5 - The Secret Passage in the Wardrobe
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Clara’s hand flew to her mouth as she looked at Lily, who was stirring awake at the sound of Marcus’s voice booming over the intercom.
"They won't wait five minutes," Clara said, her survival instincts overriding the weakness in her legs as she reached for the IV needle in her arm. "When Genevieve locked me in that cellar on Tuesday, she didn't even give me water while she tried to make me tell her where I hid the rest of the papers from the wall. She wants all three of us dead before Drago asks why I’m even in this house!"
"Leave the needle—let me," Lorenzo said swiftly, stepping to the bed, crimping the plastic tube, and sliding the catheter smoothly from her vein before taping a gauze pad over the crook of her elbow.
He grabbed a warm fleece zip-up and thick wool socks from his dresser and knelt in front of Clara, sliding the socks onto her bruised, freezing feet himself. The unexpected gentleness of his hands—the hands of a man who ruled the Hudson Valley underworld with iron terror—made Clara’s breath hitch.
"Can you walk?" Lorenzo asked, looking up into her hazel eyes.
"For her, I can run across broken glass," Clara whispered fiercely, looking at Lily.
"Good." Lorenzo stood up and lifted Lily into his arms as the little girl rubbed her eyes sleepily.
"Are the bad people here, Uncle Enzo?" Lily mumbled against his shoulder, instinctively using the name she had heard her mother whisper in the cellar.
Something fierce and protective tightened around Lorenzo’s heart at the sound of those two words from the child’s lips. He pressed his palm gently against the back of Lily’s dark curls.
"Nobody touches you while I’m breathing, little one," Lorenzo murmured. "Hold onto your rabbit and don't make a sound."
He walked to the massive walk-in cedar wardrobe at the back of the master suite, pushed aside a row of bespoke Italian suits, and pressed two hidden catches inside the wood paneling at the back.
With a quiet click, the false cedar back swung inward, revealing a narrow, brick-lined dumbwaiter shaft and an iron ladder that ran vertically through the core of the mansion’s central chimney stack.
"My grandfather built this house during Prohibition," Lorenzo whispered, gesturing Clara inside first and handing her a compact Glock 43. "Do you know how to shoot?"
"My father was an upstate sheriff’s deputy before he retired," Clara replied, checking the magazine and flicking off the safety with practiced ease. "Point and squeeze."
A ghost of a grim smile touched Lorenzo’s mouth. "The iron rungs go down past the second and first floors straight into the wine tunnel behind the greenhouse. Wait for me at the bottom gate with Rico—I’m buzzing him through the service shaft now."
"What about you?!" Clara grabbed his coat sleeve as he reached to pull the secret panel shut from the outside. "You can't walk into that library alone against twelve gunmen!"
"If I don't walk into that library in two minutes, Marcus will know we used the chimney shaft and have his men waiting at the greenhouse exit before you even climb down," Lorenzo said calmly. "Besides, Genevieve thinks she holds all the cards because she found the cellar wall. She doesn't know what you just told me about Lily."
"Lorenzo, Drago will shoot you on sight!"
"Drago is seventy years old and lost his only son five years ago," Lorenzo said, his dark eyes gleaming like polished obsidian. "Give me the baby photograph from the locket."
Understanding flashed across Clara’s face. Wait—the baby in the locket was Chiara from 1998.
"Not the locket," Clara whispered rapidly, reaching inside the collar of her torn housekeeper’s blouse and pulling out a thin gold chain she had worn hidden against her skin for six years. Hanging from the chain was a tiny, heavy gold charm shaped like a coiled dragon with ruby eyes—alongside a miniature locket containing a picture of Chiara holding a dark-haired man with Vittorio Drago’s exact jawline. "Give him this. It belonged to Dante Drago."
Lorenzo took the gold chain, closed his fist around it, and held Clara’s gaze for one long, charged second.
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"If you don't hear from me in fifteen minutes," Lorenzo told her softly, "take the armored Range Rover in the greenhouse garage, drive straight to the Manhattan federal courthouse, and hand that Geneva key to the U.S. Attorney."
Before she could protest, he slid the cedar panel shut, locking them safely inside the dark brick shaft.
