Chapter 1 - The Secret in the Wall
I froze when the whispered name reached my ears.
Only three people in the world had ever called me Romy.
Two of them were buried in the family cemetery in South Boston.
The third had been missing for seventeen years.
I looked down at the terrified six-year-old girl standing in my forbidden office.
Mia was trembling violently.
Her tiny hands gripped the edge of my heavy mahogany desk as if it could protect her.
The baby on her back let out a soft, sleepy murmur.
I stepped past the children and approached the massive oak bookcase covering the west wall.
My fingers traced the cold wood.
I was searching for a seam my father had sworn was permanently welded shut before he died.
I found a hollow point behind a leather-bound copy of an old encyclopedia.
I pressed my thumb against it with all my strength.
A heavy metallic click echoed through the silent, rain-soaked study.
The entire bookcase shifted forward an inch on hidden steel tracks.
Dust fell from the ceiling in a thick gray cloud.
This confirmed the seal had not been broken in over a decade.
I pushed the heavy wooden structure aside.
It revealed a narrow, pitch-black corridor hidden within the architecture of my own home.
The smell of stale air and dried copper hit my senses immediately.
I reached into my tailored suit jacket and drew my weapon.
I clicked on the tactical flashlight mounted under the barrel of the gun.
The bright beam cut through the absolute darkness.
It illuminated a tiny, windowless room made of bare concrete.
Sitting on a rusted iron cot in the corner was a woman.
She was wearing a tattered evening gown that looked like it belonged to another century.
Her hair was completely white and matted with dirt.
But her face held the unmistakable, sharp features of my own bloodline.
She raised a frail, trembling hand to shield her eyes from the blinding light.
I lowered the weapon instantly.
My heart hammered violently against my ribs.
It was my Aunt Clara.
She was supposed to have died in a tragic car fire when I was twenty-one years old.
Clara looked at me through the glare of the flashlight.
Her dry, cracked lips formed a desperate and broken smile.
She didn't even look at the gun in my hand.
She looked past my shoulder.
She was staring directly at the baby strapped to Mia's back.
"You found her," Clara whispered.
Her voice rasped like dry leaves scraping against pavement.
"Found who?" I demanded.
My mind was struggling to process the sheer impossibility of her existence in my wall.
Clara stood up slowly.
Her frail legs shook under her own insignificant weight.
"Your daughter, Roman."
I stepped backward.
The words paralyzed me completely.
"I don't have a daughter," I said coldly.
Clara let out a chilling, hollow laugh that echoed terribly in the concrete room.
"That is exactly what your beautiful wife wanted you to believe."
May you like
Clara took a step out of the shadows.
"She wanted you blind before she ordered Grace to murder the child tonight."
