Chapter 2 - The Room Behind the BookshelfThe Secret My House Was Never Supposed to Have
Darkness swallowed the room.
The baby began crying.
Mia clung to me so hard her fingers dug into my wrist.
“Mr. Duca!”
“I've got you.”
I reached for the emergency lamp beneath my desk, but before I found it, something crashed behind the bookcase.
A heavy sound.
Then silence.
I pulled the flashlight from the drawer.
Its beam cut through the darkness.
The shelves stood perfectly still.
No movement.
No hidden person.
Nothing.
Except one book.
A thick leather volume sat several inches forward from the others.
I walked toward it.
Mia shook her head.
“Don't touch it.”
I ignored her.
I wrapped my hand around the spine.
The book slid out effortlessly.
A soft metallic click echoed inside the wall.
The entire bookshelf shifted.
Not much.
Just enough.
A hidden opening appeared behind it.
Mia stared.
I stared harder.
There was a narrow black passage behind the wall.
Not a closet.
Not a maintenance panel.
A passage.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
“Mia.”
“You can't go alone.”
“You're six.”
“I heard him.”
“What?”
“The man.”
She pointed into the darkness.
“He said your name.”
I wished she hadn't reminded me.
I grabbed a larger flashlight from the emergency cabinet and stepped into the opening.
Cold air touched my face.
The passage was barely wide enough for one person.
Its brick walls were coated in dust, but the floor wasn't.
There were footprints.
Fresh footprints.
Adult.
Several sets.
My pulse quickened.
Someone had been using this corridor recently.
I moved forward.
Twenty feet in, I found an old electrical cable running along the wall.
Another ten feet.
A metal chair.
A paper cup.
Half-empty.
Still fresh.
Someone had been here.
Recently.
I crouched beside the chair.
A black thread was caught on one of its screws.
Clothing.
Dark wool.
I kept going.
The corridor turned sharply.
And there it was.
A second room.
Small.
Hidden.
A single bulb hung from the ceiling.
A mattress lay on the floor.
A blanket.
A water bottle.
A portable radio.
And beside the mattress sat a man's shoe.
Only one.
I stepped forward.
“Hello?”
No answer.
I searched the corners.
Empty.
Then I noticed the far wall.
Scratches covered the brick.
Hundreds of them.
Someone had dragged something across the surface.
At the center was a message carved into the mortar.
DON'T TRUST VINCENT.
My stomach tightened.
Vincent Hale.
My head of security.
The man who had worked for me for eleven years.
The man who knew every camera.
Every door.
Every blind spot.
Every key.
I took out my phone.
No signal.
Of course.
Then I heard movement behind me.
I spun around.
Mia stood in the passage holding Lily.
“What did I tell you?”
“You told me to stay.”
“And you didn't.”
“My sister woke up.”
I moved toward her.
“Go back to the study.”
Mia stared at the carved message.
She couldn't read all the words, but she knew something was wrong.
“What's Vincent?”
“Nothing.”
She looked at me.
“He's the man who checks the cameras.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he always smells like smoke.”
The hair on my arms rose.
“Has Vincent ever talked to you?”
Mia nodded.
“Sometimes.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked me if I ever heard knocking.”
I went still.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“What else?”
“He said if I heard it, I should tell my mama.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What did Grace say?”
“She told me to stay out of the library.”
That was the first moment I realized this wasn't a child imagining sounds.
Grace knew.
She had known.
Eight years in my house.
Eight years of loyalty.
And now I wondered how much she had been hiding.
I ordered Mia back to the study.
Then I searched the hidden room again.
Nothing.
But as I turned to leave, my flashlight caught something underneath the mattress.
A photograph.
I pulled it out.
The image showed five people standing in front of my house twenty-three years earlier.
I recognized three immediately.
My father.
My brother Adrian.
And Vincent.
The fourth was Caleb Harper.
Mia's father.
The fifth person was a woman I had never seen before.
She was holding a newborn baby.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written a date.
October 14, 2003.
And one sentence.
HE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BABY.
I turned the photograph over again.
The woman in the picture was staring directly into the camera.
Then I recognized her.
Not from life.
From an old newspaper article.
She was Elena Vale.
A woman who had disappeared twenty-three years ago.
According to every record I'd ever seen, Elena had died shortly after giving birth.
But the photograph proved something else.
She had been alive.
And she had been standing in my house.
I heard footsteps in the corridor.
Slow.
Heavy.
Someone was coming.
I shoved the photograph into my pocket.
The footsteps stopped.
A man's voice came from the darkness.
“You shouldn't have opened that door.”
I raised the flashlight.
Nothing.
May you like
Then something slammed into the back of my head.
Everything went black.
Related Stories
