Chapter 3 - The Housekeeper’s Confession
“Grace?” I dropped to my knees beside her, tucking my firearm back into my holster and grabbing her thin shoulders to lift her upright against the granite wall. “Grace, look at me. What happened to you?”
She coughed violently, her breathing ragged, her shivering body clinging to my wool coat for warmth.
“Mr. Duca…” she gasped, her voice cracked and hoarse. “Mia… is Mia okay? Did they hurt my babies?”
“They’re safe. They’re downstairs in the kitchen,” I assured her, wrapping my heavy coat around her frail shoulders. “Who put you down here, Grace? The vault behind my study was sealed seventeen years ago!”
Grace looked at me through eyes filled with profound terror and sorrow. She raised a shaking, mud-stained finger, pointing toward the dark narrow tunnel branching off from the far side of the underground chamber.
“It… it wasn't sealed, Roman,” Grace whispered, her lips blue from the cold. “It was only sealed from your side. Your uncle Dominic… he kept the tunnel from the wharf open.”
I froze.
Dominic Duca—my father’s younger brother, the man who had managed our family's real estate holdings and port facilities while I ran the security and logistics operations. The man who sat at my dinner table every Sunday evening.
“Dominic?” I asked, my voice dangerously calm. “Dominic put you down here?”
“He came here three days ago,” Grace wept, clutching my lapel. “He found out that I… that I found the old chest in the attic while cleaning the storage rafters. I didn't mean to look inside, Mr. Duca! I swear on my life I didn't mean to look!”
“What chest, Grace?”
“The chest with your mother’s letters,” Grace sobbed. “The letters from 1986. Dominic knew I read them. He came to my quarters while you were in New York on Tuesday. He locked me down here… he said he was going to take Mia and Lily to a facility in Canada so nobody would ever ask questions about why I disappeared!”
A dark, blinding rage rushed through my veins, so intense it made my sight blur at the edges.
My mother hadn't died of complications during childbirth in 1988.
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My mother had lived long enough to write letters in 1986—letters that my uncle Dominic had spent seventeen years attempting to bury beneath tons of granite and iron.
“Roman…” Grace whispered, her hand tightening on my arm as she looked toward the dark tunnel ahead. “There’s someone else down there. Further down… in the deep cell.”
