Chapter 3 - The Shadows in the West Wing**
The kitchen seemed to tilt on its axis.
The marble floor, the copper pots hanging above the island, the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the French doors—everything blurred into an unrecognizable, suffocating vacuum.
“What did you just say?” I breathed, my voice barely audible above the ringing in my ears.
Grace kept her hand firmly wrapped around Sophie’s trembling fingers, her eyes locked on mine with grim, terrifying seriousness.
“Mr. Romano, listen to me very carefully,” Grace whispered urgently, crouching down so she was eye-level with my daughters. “I didn't believe it when I first started working here two months ago. I thought they were just suffering from severe PTSD. But children see things adults ignore. They hear things through these thick walls that we write off as settling timber.”
“That’s impossible,” I snapped, my voice rising in denial, though my blood had turned to liquid nitrogen. “The police searched this entire estate twice! Detective Miller and his homicide squad tore this house apart down to the floorboards. My security system is military-grade. No one could live in this house without my knowledge!”
“Did they search the old servant quarters in the west wing?” Grace asked quietly.
I stopped dead.
The west wing.
When I bought the Romano estate five years ago, the original nineteenth-century manor had been preserved as a historical landmark, connected to the modern glass-and-steel architectural expansion by a long, vaulted gallery. The west wing contained old storage rooms, obsolete servant quarters, and a maze of forgotten utility tunnels built during the Prohibition era. I hadn't set foot in those rooms in years. They were kept locked, sealed off behind heavy fire doors.
Or so I had always assumed.
“Daddy...”
A small, fragile voice broke the silence.
I whipped my head down. It was Sophie. She had finally let go of Grace’s hand, looking up at me with tears streaming down her pale cheeks. For fourteen months, I would have traded my entire empire just to hear her speak a single syllable. Now, her words felt like a death sentence.
“He wears dark shoes,” Sophie whispered, her voice cracking with suppressed sobs. “He walks down the hall when the house is dark. He smells like the rain outside, Daddy. Just like the night Mommy didn't come home from preschool.”
Olivia nodded slowly from the counter, fresh tears spilling over her lashes. “He stands at the end of the hall and watches us sleep through the glass door, Daddy. He told us... if we ever talked... if we ever made a sound... he would take you away too.”
A red haze exploded behind my eyes.
All the grief, all the guilt, all the hollow phantom pain of the last fourteen months crystallized into a blinding, feral rage. It wasn't just sadness anymore. It was war.
My daughters hadn't been mute because of psychological shock.
They had been mute because they were being held hostage of the mind, terrorized day in and day out inside their own fortress by a monster living right under our roof, watching them through the cracks in our security.
“Grace,” I said, my voice dropping into a deadly, gravelly quiet that made the housekeeper flinch.
“Yes, Mr. Romano?”
“Take the girls. Get out of the house right now. Drive to the police precinct in Garden City and do not stop for anything.”
“Mr. Romano, you can't go down there alone—”
“Go!” I roared, the sheer volume of my command rattling the windows.
Grace didn't argue further. She scooped little Nora into her arms, grabbed Olivia and Sophie by their hands, and sprinted through the side mudroom door toward the security SUV parked in the driveway.
As the tires crunched rapidly down the gravel drive, I turned around.
I walked past the kitchen island, strode across the marble foyer, and reached behind the heavy oak paneling beside the grand staircase. My fingers found the hidden biometric lock. I pressed my thumb against the scanner and punched in a six-digit military override code.
May you like
With a heavy, mechanical clack, a hidden floor-to-ceiling wall panel swung open, revealing a narrow, dark concrete stairwell leading down into the pitch-black utility tunnels beneath the west wing.
I reached inside the control box, pulled out a heavy steel-barreled flashlight and a matte-black Sig Sauer P226 pistol from my personal wall safe, chambered a round with a sharp, echoing clack, and descended into the dark.
