Chapter 3 - THE CAGE BUILT ON LIES
Luca did not hesitate for another second.
He threw his full weight against the cast-iron wheel of the vault, his shoulder muscles straining against the tuxedo jacket.
The rusted internal gears screamed in protest.
With a violent heave, the heavy mechanical bolts ground backward out of their housings.
Luca wrenched the heavy steel door open.
The wave of foul air that escaped from the interior made Daniel take an involuntary step backward.
Luca did not back away.
He pulled the small tactical flashlight from Daniel’s tactical vest and clicked it on.
The high-intensity beam pierced the gloom of the ten-by-ten windowless vault.
In the far corner, huddled on a stained mattress thrown directly onto the damp concrete floor, was a girl who looked like a ghost.
Her dark hair was tangled and filthy, falling over hollow cheeks that were pale as chalk.
Her clothes were the ragged remains of a designer dress she had worn six months ago at their father’s memorial service.
Around her right ankle was a heavy steel cuff connected to an eyebolt drilled directly into the foundation wall.
Empty plastic water bottles and half-eaten pieces of moldy bread littered the floor around her.
Elena raised two bruised, filthy hands to shield her eyes from the blinding light, weeping uncontrollably.
"Please..."
She choked out, pressing her back against the weeping stone wall.
"Please, Luca, don't let them hurt me anymore. I won't say anything about the shipping manifests. I swear I won't tell anyone about the Bellinis."
Luca dropped his weapon onto the concrete.
He fell to his knees beside the stained mattress, completely unconcerned with the filth soaking through his thousand-dollar trousers.
"Elena."
His voice cracked, thick with an anguish that tore through his chest like shrapnel.
He reached out with trembling hands, gently pulling her arms away from her face.
"Elena, look at me. Look at my eyes."
The girl blinked against the glare, her sunken, dark eyes searching his features with terrifying suspicion.
"You... you signed the papers."
She whispered, her lower lip trembling.
"Vanessa brought them down every Sunday. Letters with your signature, Luca. Telling me I was a disgrace to the family name. Telling me that if I made a single sound while you were in the house, you would have my other leg broken."
Luca felt a cold, murderous darkness swallow every shred of sanity in his mind.
He reached down and touched the heavy steel chain attached to her ankle.
"I thought you were dead, Elena."
He whispered, his forehead pressing against hers.
"They found your car burned at the bottom of a ravine in Calabria. They gave me dental records. They gave me ashes."
Elena stared at him, her chest heaving with shallow, ragged breaths.
"Vanessa... Vanessa arranged the trip to Italy. She said our family was in danger. She picked me up from the airport herself and brought me right back to Chicago in the back of a cargo crate."
Luca pulled her frail, shivering body into his chest, wrapping his heavy arms around her as if he could shield her from the horrors of the last six months.
She weighed nothing.
She felt like a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in frozen skin.
"Daniel!"
Luca roared, his voice shaking the concrete ceiling.
"Get the bolt cutters from the armory! Now! And get Hayes down here immediately!"
Daniel sprinted down the corridor, his boots echoing against the stone like gunshots.
While Luca held his weeping sister in the bowels of the mansion, three floors above them, the nightmare had found a new target.
Sophie Bennett was sitting on the edge of an examination table in the private third-floor clinic.
Dr. Hayes had just finished placing seven fine nylon sutures behind her left ear.
The sharp sting of the local anesthetic had worn off, leaving a dull, throbbing ache that pulsed with every heartbeat.
"The tympanic membrane is bruised, Sophie, but it isn't ruptured."
Dr. Hayes said quietly as he peeled off his latex gloves.
"Your hearing should return within a few weeks, provided you rest and avoid loud environments."
"Thank you, Doctor."
I whispered, pulling my hair down carefully to conceal the white gauze pad.
"You need to be careful, girl."
The doctor murmured, his eyes full of tired pity.
"This house is not a place for innocent people. When the masters start fighting, the servants are the first ones swept into the incinerator."
Before I could answer, the heavy mahogany door of the clinic swung open.
It wasn't Luca.
It wasn't Mrs. Carter.
Vanessa Bellini stepped into the room, dressed in an ivory silk robe with a dark cashmere coat draped over her shoulders.
She had removed her jewelry, but the cold venom in her eyes was sharper than any diamond.
Behind her stood a man I had never seen before—a broad, scarred individual with a flat nose and cold gray eyes, wearing a dark leather jacket.
Dr. Hayes immediately stiffened.
"Miss Bellini. This room is private. The patient needs rest."
Vanessa didn't even look at the doctor.
She gestured with two fingers toward the man behind her.
The large man stepped forward, grabbed Dr. Hayes by the back of his neck with one massive hand, and shoved him violently out into the hallway.
The heavy door slammed shut and clicked locked.
I stood up from the examination table, my back hitting the medical supply cabinets so hard the glass vials inside rattled.
"Miss Bellini..."
Vanessa walked toward me with slow, measured steps, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her cashmere coat.
"You have a very loose tongue for a maid, Sophie."
She said, her voice silky and terrifyingly quiet.
"I told Mr. Moretti nothing."
I stammered, my good right ear picking up the venomous hiss in her words.
"I told him the door hit me. I protected you."
Vanessa stopped six inches from me.
She pulled her right hand from her coat pocket.
She wasn't holding a gun.
She was holding a laminated hospital visitor badge.
My heart stopped.
It was my brother Leo’s medical registration badge from St. Jude’s Dialysis Pavilion.
"Leo Bennett."
She read the name off the plastic card with cruel amusement.
"Room 304. Bed B. Scheduled for a four-hour blood filtration cycle at eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Please,"
I fell to my knees right in front of her, grabbing the hem of her silk robe with both hands.
"Please don't touch him. He has nothing to do with this. He doesn't know anything about this family."
Vanessa looked down at me as if I were a cockroach crawling across her pristine marble floor.
"When you dropped those linens this afternoon, you dropped something else, didn't you, Sophie?"
My breath hitched.
My mind raced back to that terrifying moment outside the music room.
When she had slammed the door into my head, my pocket had emptied onto the floor.
My keys.
My lip balm.
And the small, silver flash drive I had picked up off the floor of the private library two days earlier while dusting Luca’s mahogany desk.
I hadn't known what was on it.
I had intended to hand it to Mrs. Carter, but the chaos of the dinner preparations had pushed it from my mind.
"I don't have it."
I whispered, the room spinning around me.
"You are lying to me, little girl."
Vanessa reached down, grabbing my hair by the roots and yanking my head back with vicious force.
The pain tore through my fresh stitches, sending a burst of hot agony down the side of my neck.
"The flash drive contains five years of encrypted routing codes for the Moretti port authority in Boston."
She snarled into my face, her mask of elegance completely stripped away.
"If my father does not have those codes by sunrise, your brother will not survive his morning treatment. The saline bag hooked to his chest will be replaced with two hundred milligrams of potassium chloride."
Tears streamed down my cheeks, mixing with the fresh blood seeping through the gauze.
"I left it in my locker,"
I gasped, choking on my own breath.
"In the basement changing room. In my coat pocket."
Vanessa let go of my hair, letting my skull hit the linoleum floor with a sickening thud.
"Marco."
She commanded without looking back.
The scarred man stepped forward.
"Take her down to the basement. Retrieve the drive. And once you have it in your hands..."
She paused, wiping her fingertips on a silk handkerchief as if she had touched something filthy.
"...make sure Sophie has an unfortunate accident on the service stairs. We can't have brain-damaged staff giving contradictory statements to the police, can we?"
The large man grinned, reaching down with hands like iron vices to drag me toward the dark hallway.
May you like
My time had run out.
If I went to that basement alone, I was dead.
