Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Had Been Dead Seventeen Years
Elena Duca drank water as though someone might take the glass away.
Dr. Samuel Hart examined her in the infirmary.
Dehydration. Bruised wrists. Sedatives in her blood.
No life-threatening injury.
But someone had kept her hidden recently.
Not for seventeen years.
That was worse.
“Who put you in that room?” I asked.
Elena looked at Luca.
“Not while he’s here.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“You think I did this?”
“I don’t know what you did.”
I ordered Luca outside.
He obeyed, but barely.
Then Elena told me Grace had been helping her.
Seven months earlier, Grace had discovered a hidden service passage behind the laundry room.
She found Elena there, weak and terrified.
My uncle Salvatore intercepted Grace before she could tell me.
He showed her photographs of Mia at school and Sophie in their apartment.
He told Grace that if she spoke to me, her girls would disappear.
That was why Grace stayed silent.
That was why she fed Elena in secret.
That was why she had vanished after receiving the phone call.
“Why were you alive?” I asked Elena.
“Because your father never killed me.”
“My father?”
“He tried to hide me.”
“From who?”
“Salvatore.”
Then she told me the first truth that changed everything.
My mother, Lucia Duca, had not died of pneumonia.
She had been poisoned.
Elena said Lucia had discovered Salvatore stealing family money through shell companies and paying public officials.
Lucia had been secretly cooperating with investigators.
Before she could testify, she became ill.
My father buried the truth.
I assumed he was protecting Salvatore.
Elena said it was more complicated.
Then Mia slipped into the infirmary.
“Are you the crying lady?” she asked.
Elena smiled sadly.
“Yes.”
“Did Mama help you?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Mia started crying silently.
That hurt worse than screaming.
I promised again that I would find Grace.
Then Mia told me something else.
Mrs. Bell—the senior household supervisor—had told her that Grace could lose the apartment if one room remained unfinished.
Helen Bell had worked for my family twelve years.
By morning, she was gone.
Security footage showed Grace returning to the mansion at 1:12 a.m.
At 1:56, minutes after I opened the west room, she fled.
The upstairs camera feeds had been manipulated.
Only five people had access.
Luca.
My uncle Salvatore.
My cousin Dominic.
Helen Bell.
And Michael Vane, my father’s former attorney.
At seven in the morning, Salvatore arrived.
Uninvited.
He called me “Romy.”
I told him never to use the name again.
Then I asked why he knew Grace was missing when nobody had told him.
His expression changed only for a second.
It was enough.
I told him Elena was alive.
For the first time in years, my uncle looked afraid.
“You opened the west room?”
“Yes.”
“You idiot.”
“Why?”
“Because if Elena is alive, the wrong people will come for you.”
Before he could explain, the estate alarm screamed.
Two SUVs crashed through the east gate.
Armed men poured out.
Mia screamed upstairs.
I reached her just as a gunman appeared outside holding Grace by the arm.
Alive.
A weapon pressed to her side.
“MAMA!” Mia cried.
The man shouted, “Bring us Elena!”
Grace shook her head.
“Don’t!”
I looked at her.
At Mia.
At Sophie.
At Elena.
Then I raised my gun.
“No trade.”
The gunman smiled.
May you like
“Then she dies.”
I said quietly, “No. You do.”
