Chapter 10
Alexander went rigid.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Beneath the file was a smaller envelope.
It was sealed with dark red wax.
The symbol pressed into the wax was not the Russo crest.
It was a simple letter R.
Rebecca’s initial.
Alexander reached for it.
I caught his wrist.
“Wait.”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“The wax is fresh.”
We both stared at the envelope.
A faint warmth still clung to the seal.
Someone had been in the archive recently.
Someone who had known we would come looking.
From somewhere behind the shelves came the soft scrape of a door opening.
Alexander turned toward the sound.
I moved beside him.
On the far wall, a narrow panel stood ajar, revealing a passage into darkness.
And from within that hidden passage, a phone began to ring.
PART 3: The Room They Had Kept Locked for Ten Years 019
The phone rang again.
Alexander’s hand remained on my wrist for half a second before he released me. He moved toward the hidden passage, but I caught his sleeve.
“Don’t go in first.”
His eyes met mine. “You think someone is waiting there?”
“I think someone wants us to follow.”
The ringing stopped.
Silence filled the archive.
Beyond the open panel, darkness stretched between the stone walls. A faint draft moved through the room, carrying the smell of damp earth and something sharper—fresh paint, perhaps, or dust disturbed recently.
Alexander took the lamp from the desk.
“Stay behind me.”
“I’m not a guest in this investigation.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You’re the reason for it.”
The words were not an order. They were an admission.
He stepped into the passage.
I followed, keeping close enough to see the light move across the walls. The corridor was narrow but well built, concealed behind the archive shelves and leading downward at a gradual angle. It appeared older than the estate’s west wing, its stonework rougher and its ceiling lower.
After several yards, the passage divided.
One branch continued downward.
The other ended at a small wooden door.
A brass plate had been fixed to it recently.
No name. No symbol.
Just a number.
17.
Alexander lifted the lamp toward it.
“I’ve never seen this.”
“You were raised in this house.”
“My father kept rooms I knew nothing about.”
“You trusted him?”
“Not with everything.”
“Yet you trusted his evidence against me.”