Chapter 4 - The Deep Cell
I stood up, pulling a secondary emergency light and a pair of tactical gloves from my vest.
“Grace, can you walk?” I asked, helping her to her feet.
She nodded weakly, leaning heavily against my shoulder. “I can stand. But Mr. Duca… you don't know what he’s been doing beneath this house. He told everyone you were in charge of the family, but he’s been using the old maritime tunnels to move illegal cargo right under your feet.”
“We’re going back up to the study first,” I said firmly. “I’m putting you and your daughters in my panic room behind the wine cellar. Nobody enters this house tonight and leaves alive.”
I guided Grace slowly up the damp stone stairs, past the hidden bookcase, and into the warm amber light of my private study. I helped her down to the kitchen, where Mia was sitting on the floor beside the heavy refrigerator, hugging her sleeping baby sister while weeping quietly.
When Mia saw her mother step through the door, she let out a muffled cry and threw her small arms around Grace’s waist, burying her face in the wet wool coat.
“Mama! Mama, you came back!”
“I’m here, sweetie… I’m here,” Grace cried, falling to her knees and kissing her children’s hair over and over again.
I locked them inside the secure panic room built behind the kitchen pantry—a reinforced steel bunker equipped with independent air filtration, CCTV monitors, and emergency communication lines. I handed Grace an encrypted satellite phone.
“If you hear gunfire upstairs, do not open this door for anyone unless they speak the security code I gave you,” I instructed.
“Roman,” Grace called out as the heavy steel door began to glide shut on its hydraulic tracks. “The voice… the woman who knocked on the wall…”
I stopped, my hand resting on the control panel.
“It wasn't me who knocked, Roman,” Grace admitted, her voice trembling. “I was too weak to stand up from the floor. The knocking came from the deep cell… at the end of the tunnel.”
The heavy door sealed shut with a soft thud, leaving me alone in the silent kitchen.
I reached for my lapel communicator and pressed the speed-dial for my chief of security, Dante Rossi—a man who had served beside me in the special operations unit before joining my private security detail ten years ago.
“Dante,” I said into the mic.
May you like
“Sir?” Dante answered instantly. “I’m at the South Boston perimeter dock. Is everything alright at the house?”
“Bring six armed operators to the Beacon Hill estate through the subterranean storm entrance,” I ordered flatly. “We are clearing the lower vaults tonight. And bring Uncle Dominic with you.”
