Chapter 11 - The Red Line
Beatrice pressed her ear to the cellar door.
“Lily,” she called. “Sweetheart, I’m here.”
A wheeze answered. High and desperate.
Beatrice pulled at the handle. It did not move. She searched the kitchen drawers for anything that might break the lock. Knives. A meat mallet. A fireplace poker from the breakfast room.
Nothing worked. The wheezing grew weaker.
Beatrice looked toward the hall.
The guards outside would not enter without permission from Leo, Mateo, or Victoria. That was one of the first rules every staff member learned.
She looked at the stairs. Then she looked toward the west wing.
Leo Rossi’s private study.
No one entered that room without invitation. Not cleaners. Not guards. Not even Victoria.
In that room was the black phone.
Beatrice knew because she had once seen Leo remove it from the top right drawer, press one red button, and say, “This line is for blood emergencies only.”
The penalty for touching it was not written anywhere. It did not have to be.
Beatrice ran.
Her body was not made for speed, at least not the kind admired in gyms and glossy magazines. Her breath burned. Her thighs ached. Her injured fingers throbbed with every pounding step.
But she ran anyway.
At the study door, she tried the handle. Locked.
“Please,” she whispered.
She backed up, lowered her shoulder, and threw herself into the door.
The frame shuddered. She hit it again.
Pain burst across her shoulder. Again.
The lock cracked. Again.
The door split open so violently she fell into the room, landing on one knee among splinters of expensive oak.
She crawled to the desk. The top right drawer was locked too.
Beatrice picked up a marble paperweight and smashed it until wood gave way.
There it was. The black phone.
Her swollen fingers shook so badly she nearly dropped it. She pressed the red button.
It rang once. Twice.
A man answered. “Speak.”
The sound of Leo Rossi’s voice should have terrified her. Instead, it saved her from falling apart.
“Mr. Rossi,” she gasped. “It’s Beatrice.”
Silence.
Then, colder, “Why do you have this phone?”
“Please come home now,” she sobbed. “Victoria locked Lily in the wine cellar. She’s having an asthma attack. I can’t get the key. She’ll destroy her, Mr. Rossi. She’ll destroy her.”
Behind Leo, Beatrice heard traffic, a horn, a man’s muffled voice. Then nothing.
When Leo spoke again, his voice had changed into something almost inhumanly calm.
“Where are you?”
“In your study. I’m sorry. I broke the door. I couldn’t—”
“Listen to me. Go back to Lily. Stay by the cellar.”
“But you’re in Miami.”
May you like
“Go back to my daughter.”
The line went dead.
