Chapter 2 - The Vanishing in Room 304
The entire ballroom seemed to lose all available oxygen at the exact same moment.
A collective gasp rippled through the eighty guests standing around the perimeter of the grand foyer.
Vanessa took a sharp step backward, her diamond bracelet catching the light with a violent metallic sparkle.
“She’s lying, Luca!” Vanessa snapped, her cultivated high-society accent fraying at the edges.
“The girl is clearly suffering from exhaustion or some sort of psychotic episode! Look at her shaking!”
Luca didn't flinch.
He didn't blink.
He simply raised two fingers toward his head of household security standing by the massive front doors.
“Marco,” Luca commanded, his voice dead, quiet, and completely devoid of human warmth.
“Lock the outer iron gates. No vehicle leaves this property without my personal verbal authorization.”
The hulking security chief nodded once and pressed his earpiece immediately.
“Wait!” Vanessa cried, stepping between Luca and the grand curved marble staircase.
“You cannot lock our guests inside like common criminals! This is our engagement party, Luca!”
“This is my house,” Luca said, stepping past her as if she were made of transparent, meaningless vapor.
He looked back over his shoulder directly at me.
“Sophie. Walk with me.”
I gripped my bleeding left forearm against my ribs and followed his long, aggressive strides up the sweeping stairs.
The heavy silence of the foyer was swallowed by the thick Persian wool runners lining the third-floor corridor.
Up here, far away from the champagne flutes and classical violins, the mansion felt ancient, vast, and suffocating.
Every single step sent a throbbing pulse of nausea through my stomach from the blood loss.
Luca walked three paces ahead of me, his broad shoulders squared like an executioner heading to the gallows.
“Tell me what happened between three o'clock and the moment I walked through that door,” he said quietly.
His voice was so steady it was terrifying.
“Miss Bellini came to the east wing at three-thirty,” I whispered, watching his dark coat move.
“She brought two men in civilian medical scrub uniforms. They had no hospital badges or identification clips.”
Luca stopped abruptly right outside the carved oak doors of Suite 304—Eleanor Moretti’s private quarters.
He didn't turn around to look at me.
“Continue.”
“They told Mrs. Moretti that an urgent cardiovascular specialist had opened an immediate bed at a private retreat.”
“My mother has her own private medical wing on the first floor,” Luca said, his hand resting on the brass door lever.
“I know, sir. Mrs. Moretti knew that too.”
“What did my mother do?”
“She refused to sign the transfer papers. She told Miss Bellini that she would wait until you came home.”
Luca’s hand squeezed the brass lever so hard the knuckles turned chalk white.
“And Vanessa?”
“Miss Bellini told the two men that Mrs. Moretti was experiencing severe cognitive dementia and disorientation.”
I swallowed hard against the dryness in my throat.
“They produced a leather restraint strap from their equipment bag.”
The brass handle snapped with a sharp metallic crack beneath Luca’s bare hand.
He pushed the heavy door open.
The grand master suite was dead, freezing cold.
The French balcony doors were cracked open an inch, letting the wet October wind billow the sheer white curtains.
The king-sized four-poster bed was completely stripped down to the bare mattress pad.
Eleanor’s hand-knitted lavender cardigan—the one she had been knitting for Luca’s upcoming birthday—lay on the floor.
Beside it, a crushed plastic pill organizer was split open, dozens of tiny heart medications scattered across the rug.
Luca stepped into the center of the dark room, his shoes crushing a blue capsule into powder.
He bent down slowly, picking up the small silver cross necklace that his mother never took off her neck.
The silver chain had been brutally snapped.
A single brown speck of dried blood marked the clasp.
Luca turned around slowly, holding the broken silver chain in the open palm of his massive hand.
His face was completely devoid of color, his dark eyes transformed into bottomless pits of obsidian rage.
“You said she fought them.”
“She tried to, sir,” I said, tears finally spilling over my bruised cheeks.
“I heard her screaming from the service pantry down the hall. I ran in before they could tighten the chest straps.”
“What did you do, Sophie?”
“I threw a glass pitcher of iced tea directly into the driver’s face.”
Luca looked down at my bleeding arm.
“And then?”
“The second man grabbed me by my left arm and slammed me against the heavy corner of the marble fireplace mantle.”
I pressed my shaking fingers against the throbbing bruise near my elbow.
“The bone cracked, sir. I felt it snap. But Mrs. Moretti used her good hand to unlock the wheelchair brakes.”
Luca’s breathing was completely silent, yet the veins along his powerful neck were bulging against his collar.
“Where did you take her?”
“We couldn't take the main elevator because Miss Bellini had the master keycard around her neck.”
“The service hoist?” Luca asked instantly.
“Yes, sir. I managed to push Mrs. Moretti into the dumbwaiter corridor behind the old laundry chute.”
“Where did you leave her, Sophie? Where is my mother right now?”
I looked past his shoulder toward the dark hallway stretching into the west wing of the estate.
“I helped her into the abandoned third-floor sewing room behind the linen vault.”
“The sewing room has no outside exits,” Luca noted, his eyes narrowing with sharp tactical awareness.
“Exactly. It only locks from the inside with a vintage brass deadbolt. I made her turn the bolt before I left.”
Luca didn't waste another second.
He spun on his heel and moved like a black streak down the dark corridor toward the sewing room.
I hurried behind him as fast as my battered legs could carry me, holding onto the wall for support.
When we reached the end of the narrow corridor, my heart plummeted into an icy, bottomless abyss.
The vintage oak door of the sewing room did not have its deadbolt engaged.
The door stood wide open, hovering a few inches off the jamb.
The overhead yellow lightbulb was swinging gently back and forth on its bare black cord.
Luca drew a matte-black semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder holster with a smooth, soundless motion.
He kicked the door fully open with the heavy sole of his leather boot.
The room was completely empty.
On the bare wooden floorboards lay Mrs. Moretti’s thick wool wheelchair blanket, kicked into a tangled heap.
A fresh streak of black rubber from a rolling transport cart marked the edge of the doorway threshold.
Eleanor was completely gone.
Before either of us could draw a breath, the satellite radio clipped to Luca’s belt squawked with loud static.
It was Marco, the head of gate security, his voice breathless and laced with high panic.
“Boss! We have a severe perimeter violation at the south maintenance gate!”
Luca brought the radio to his lips without lowering his pistol.
“Report. Now.”
“A private black ambulance just breached the rear barrier gate, sir! They smashed through the wooden boom arm!”
“Did you open fire?” Luca roared into the microphone.
“We couldn't, Mr. Moretti! The driver held Miss Bellini’s signed medical transport transfer right against the glass!”
Marco’s voice crackled through another wave of rain static.
“And Boss... there was an old woman in the back seat wrapped in gray blankets.”
Luca’s knuckles went pure white against the grip of his firearm.
“Is it my mother, Marco? Did you see her face?”
A terrifying two-second pause hung in the cold sewing room air.
“Sir, the woman was fighting the orderly in the back. She kicked out the rear side window.”
A sudden burst of shouting and heavy engine revving blasted through the security chief’s radio channel.
Then, rising above the distant scream of the rain and sirens, a sharp, familiar voice crackled across the frequency.
“Luca! Don't let her touch the safe!” Eleanor Moretti screamed through the broken radio line.
“Vanessa isn't after your money! She's after the 1994 shipping ledger!”
The connection abruptly severed into a screech of deafening white noise.
Luca stood frozen in the center of the empty sewing room, the dead radio trembling slightly in his grip.
He slowly lowered the radio, turned his towering frame around, and stared directly into my eyes.
May you like
“Sophie,” he said, his voice dropping into a deadly, chilling whisper.
“What else did my mother tell you before they dragged her into that hallway?”
