Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Locked RoomThe first bullet tore through the portrait above my head.
The second shattered a chandelier crystal.
I pulled Ellie against my chest and dropped behind the marble staircase.
“Stay down.”
“I know.”
She said it calmly.
Too calmly.
I drew my pistol.
Petr's voice thundered from the east hallway.
“Three inside!”
Another burst of gunfire followed.
Then silence.
Not real silence.
The kind that comes when armed men realize the person they're hunting has stopped moving.
I listened.
Footsteps.
One pair.
Then another.
Coming from upstairs.
I glanced at Ellie.
“Your mother is upstairs?”
“She told me to wait for you.”
“How long?”
“All day.”
“Where is she?”
Ellie pointed.
“The room with no door.”
I stared at her.
There was no room with no door.
At least none anyone in this house knew about.
Then I remembered the old architecture drawings my father had kept hidden in his study.
A renovation from 1968.
One room was marked as a sealed storage vault behind the west library.
A room with no visible entrance.
I grabbed Ellie's hand.
“Come with me.”
She didn't argue.
We ran through the library.
A bullet punched into a bookshelf behind us.
I shoved Ellie behind the walnut desk and fired twice toward the corridor.
A man cursed.
Petr appeared from the opposite side and shot him.
The body hit the carpet.
Petr looked at me.
“Two more are inside.”
“Find them.”
“Already looking.”
I turned to Ellie.
She was staring at the dead man's hand.
“He has the wrong buttons.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“He took them from Mommy.”
I crouched beside her.
“What buttons?”
She pointed at the man's coat.
Two old brass navy buttons had been stitched into his sleeve.
Exactly like the ones she had brought.
My stomach tightened.
“Who is he?”
“I don't know.”
“How did your mother get into my house?”
Ellie looked toward the wall.
“She didn't.”
A chill moved down my back.
“What do you mean?”
“She was already here.”
That was impossible.
The estate's security was controlled by twelve cameras, biometric locks, motion sensors, and four armed guards outside.
No one entered unnoticed.
No one.
Then Ellie pressed her palm against a bookcase.
A click sounded.
The entire shelf moved two inches.
I froze.
She looked up at me.
“Mommy said you wouldn't remember.”
The shelf swung inward.
Behind it was a narrow stone corridor.
My father had sealed it forty years ago.
I hadn't seen it since I was a teenager.
I entered first.
Ellie followed.
At the end of the corridor stood a steel door.
There was no handle.
Only a small circular depression.
Ellie removed another button from her pocket.
She fitted it into the depression.
The lock opened.
Inside was a room no bigger than a hotel suite.
A cot.
A table.
Medical supplies.
A sink.
And a woman sitting beside the window.
Her hair was shorter.
Her face thinner.
There were pale scars along her cheek.
But her eyes were the same.
Gray.
Steady.
Impossible.
Mara Bell stood.
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Thirty years compressed into one breath.
“You got angry,” she said.
My pistol lowered.
“Mara?”
Her eyes shifted toward Ellie.
“You came home angry.”
I could barely form words.
“You're alive.”
She smiled sadly.
“That's what everyone believed was impossible.”
I stepped toward her.
She flinched.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
That hurt more than the bullets.
“Why?”
She looked at Ellie.
“I didn't come back for you, Damon.”
I stared.
“Then why the hell are you here?”
She reached toward the table.
A red envelope lay there.
She pushed it across the surface.
“For your son.”
I didn't touch it.
“Ellie's father.”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
Mara's eyes filled with something I couldn't name.
Fear.
Shame.
Regret.
Then she said the words that made my blood run cold.
“You know him.”
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I turned.
No one.
When I looked back, Mara was gone.
The window was open.
The room was empty.
Ellie stood beside the table, holding a small photograph.
I snatched it from her.
A young man stood beside Mara.
He was twenty-something.
Dark hair.
Gray-green eyes.
A scar under his left eyebrow.
And the same crooked smile I had seen every morning in my own childhood photographs.
I turned the photo over.
There was a date.
Six years ago.
And three words.
HE IS YOURS, DAMON.
My knees nearly buckled.
Petr ran into the room.
“Boss.”
I didn't answer.
“Boss, we found something.”
“What?”
He held up a phone.
“Security footage.”
I looked at the screen.
The video showed my estate's front gate.
A black sedan arrived at 2:13 p.m.
Mara stepped out.
Ellie followed.
Then another person emerged from the vehicle.
A man in a dark coat.
He turned toward the camera.
My chest tightened.
I knew that face.
I had watched it for years from across boardrooms.
Charles Rennick.
But Charles wasn't alone.
He was shaking hands with a second man.
My older brother.
Adrian.
A man who had told me for twelve years that Mara Bell had been murdered.
The video froze.
Petr whispered.
“They met before you came home.”
I stared at the image.
Then Ellie tugged my sleeve.
“That's not the bad part.”
I looked down.
She pointed at the timestamp.
“Look who arrived five minutes after Mommy.”
A second vehicle had entered through the private gate.
A vehicle registered to my family.
The driver was someone I trusted more than anyone.
Someone who had been with me since my father's stroke.
Petr's face went pale.
“That can't be.”
I zoomed in.
The license plate filled the screen.
My mouth went dry.
Because the driver was not Petr.
May you like
It was my father.
The man everyone had believed incapable of walking for thirteen years.
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