CHAPTE R 3 THE BOY BELOW
Dante ordered everyone out of the music salon except Marco and Aria.
Then he knelt and pressed his palm against the floor.
The knocking stopped.
For several seconds, the only sound was the wind moving through the broken window.
Dante tapped twice against the wood.
A single knock answered from below.
Aria wrapped both arms around herself.
“Whoever is down there heard Caleb die.”
“He may have seen who fired,” Marco said.
“Or he may be the one controlling the transmitter.”
Dante studied the edges of the carpet.
The floorboards were old oak, original to the house, but the nails around the eastern wall were newer.
He pulled the carpet back.
A narrow seam appeared beneath the piano bench.
Marco inserted a knife into it and lifted a concealed panel.
Cold air rose from the darkness.
A ladder descended into a shaft barely wide enough for one person.
Dante drew his pistol.
Aria’s breath caught.
He looked at her.
“You stay here.”
“No.”
“That was not a request.”
The words struck harder than he intended.
Her face closed instantly.
Dante corrected himself.
“The space may be trapped.”
“I will not take you into danger because you are afraid of being left out of the truth.”
“I am not afraid of being left out.”
Aria looked down into the opening.
“I am afraid the person below will disappear before I can identify him.”
Dante held her gaze.
“Then stay behind Marco.”
He descended first.
The ladder ended in a narrow brick corridor running beneath the west wing.
Electric cables had been stapled along the ceiling.
At the far end, a bare bulb burned above a steel door.
The passage did not appear on any Rossi blueprint.
Marco followed with a flashlight.
Aria came last, moving carefully because her ribs hurt with every step.
Dante saw her wince.
He said nothing, but slowed his pace.
The steel door had no handle on their side.
A keypad glowed beside it.
The six numbers from the note opened it.
Eleven.
Twenty-four.
Seventeen.
The lock clicked.
Dante raised his weapon and pushed the door inward.
A boy sat on the floor beneath a wall of monitors.
He appeared to be fifteen or sixteen, painfully thin, with dark curls hanging over his eyes and a bruise around one wrist.
Cables, batteries, and dismantled cameras surrounded him.
A half-empty bottle of water stood near his knee.
He held a screwdriver like a knife.
When Dante entered, the boy scrambled backward.
“Do not come closer.”
Dante lowered the gun slightly.
“What is your name?”
The boy looked past him.
His eyes found Aria.
His face crumpled.
“Miss Sterling.”
Aria stepped around Marco.
“Do I know you?”
The boy dropped the screwdriver.
“My name is Noah Hale.”
Dante’s gaze sharpened.
“Dr. Samuel Hale’s son?”
Noah nodded.
“My father brought me here last night.”
“He said I had to keep the feed working until someone came for me.”
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
“He never says names.”
Aria stared at the monitors.
Several displayed rooms throughout the estate.
The bridal suite.
The north gate.
The west courtyard.
The music salon.
Another screen showed a dark room lined with shelves.
A red recording icon blinked in one corner.
“Is that the Sterling library?” she asked.
Noah looked at the screen.
“Yes.”
“How are you seeing it from here?”
“The transmitters connect through a private network.”
“My father has access.”
Dante moved closer to the monitors.
“Did you see who shot Caleb Voss?”
Noah’s face went pale.
“I saw a person enter the music salon.”
“Who?”
“They wore a black hood.”
“That description fits half the people on this estate.”
“I know.”
Noah rubbed his bruised wrist.
“But I saw the hand holding the rifle.”
“Male or female?” Marco asked.
“Female.”
Aria’s head snapped toward him.
Noah continued.
“She had a ring with a blue stone.”
“A large one.”
“She took it off after she fired and put it in her pocket.”
Dante turned toward Aria.
She wore only the emerald wedding ring.
Her hands were otherwise bare.
But he remembered another woman at the ceremony.
Senator Sterling’s younger sister, Lydia Sterling, had worn an enormous sapphire surrounded by diamonds.
She had stayed at the estate after the reception, claiming the weather made travel unsafe.
Dante looked at Marco.
“Find Lydia.”
Marco spoke into his radio.
The answer came almost immediately.
Lydia Sterling’s suite was empty.
Her luggage remained.
Her shoes were by the bed.
The window was open.
No one had seen her leave.
Aria gripped the edge of a desk.
“My aunt would not kill Caleb.”
“Why not?”
“Because she was terrified of him.”
“Fear can become violence,” Dante said.
“Not Lydia’s fear.”
Aria shook her head.
“It becomes obedience.”
Noah made a small sound.
Everyone looked at him.
“She did not look afraid after she fired.”
“What did she look like?” Aria asked.
“Sad.”
Noah pointed toward one of the monitors.
“I recorded it.”
Dante moved beside him.
The boy opened a video file.
The image showed the music salon ten minutes before the shooting.
A hooded figure entered carrying a rifle case.
The person moved with a slight limp.
She positioned the chair beneath the window, assembled the weapon, and checked the courtyard.
Then she removed a sapphire ring and placed it on the piano.
For a single second, her sleeve pulled back.
A thin white scar crossed her wrist.
Aria leaned toward the screen.
Lydia had no scar.
Her mother had one.
A broken wineglass had cut Evelyn Sterling’s wrist when Aria was six.
Victor had told everyone it was an accident.
Years later, Aria learned it had happened while Evelyn tried to defend Julian from Caleb.
The hooded figure fired.
Caleb fell.
Then the shooter turned toward the camera.
She lifted two fingers to her lips.
A gesture Aria’s mother used whenever she tucked her children into bed.
Two fingers.
A silent kiss.
A promise that she would return.
Aria stumbled away from the monitors.
“No.”
Dante paused the video.
The face remained hidden, but the gesture was unmistakably deliberate.
“Your mother may be alive,” he said.
Aria shook her head again.
“She would not murder someone in front of me.”
“People change in nine years.”
“She would not.”
Dante studied her.
“What do you remember about the night she died?”
Aria’s throat tightened.
“My father woke us before dawn.”
“He said there had been an accident at the cliffs near Marblehead.”
“He said her car went through the barrier and burned.”
“Did you see a body?”
“No.”
“A funeral?”
“A closed casket.”
“Death certificate?”
“My father handled everything.”
Dante looked at Marco.
“Verify the crash.”
“Every report, every photograph, every name attached to it.”
Noah suddenly reached toward the keyboard.
The Sterling library feed had changed.
Victor Sterling entered the room with Dr. Hale beside him.
The doctor looked exhausted and frightened.
Victor carried a cane he did not need.
He closed the door, crossed to the desk, and opened a hidden compartment.
Inside sat a row of black recording drives.
Aria’s hands began to tremble.
“The punishment room recordings.”
Dante watched Victor remove one drive.
The senator placed it in a metal case.
Then he looked directly toward the hidden camera.
Noah recoiled.
“He cannot know we are watching.”
Victor smiled at the lens.
“He knows,” Aria whispered.
On-screen, Victor spoke.
The microphone captured every word.
“My dear daughter.”
Aria went rigid.
“I assume Rossi has found the little technician by now.”
Noah’s face drained of color.
Victor continued.
“You always were curious.”
“Your mother encouraged that weakness.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
Victor lifted the metal case.
“This contains the truth about Julian.”
“And the truth about the woman who gave birth to you.”
Aria stepped closer to the screen.
“What truth?”
Victor could not hear her, but his smile widened as if he had.
“At noon tomorrow, I will testify before the Senate Ethics Committee.”
“Before I enter that building, you will return to my home alone.”
“You will bring the key Caleb carried.”
“You will bring no police, no Rossi soldiers, and no husband.”
Dante’s jaw flexed.
Victor leaned toward the camera.
“If you disobey, the first recording I release will destroy your brother.”
“The second will destroy your mother.”
“The third will destroy Dante Rossi.”
He tapped the metal case.
“Choose carefully which person you are willing to bury.”
The screen went black.
Noah stared at the dead feed.
Aria could feel Dante watching her.
“I have to go,” she said.
“No.”
“He has Julian’s recording.”
“He has bait,” Dante replied.
“You do not know the difference.”
“I know my father.”
“And I know men who build traps around frightened people.”
Aria turned on him.
“You promised I could leave the estate.”
“I did.”
“Then you cannot stop me.”
Dante’s eyes darkened.
“I can refuse to let you walk into a house where someone intends to kill you.”
“That sounds like stopping me.”
“It sounds like keeping my wife alive.”
The word wife hung between them.
Not property.
Not alliance.
Not obligation.
Wife.
Aria looked away first.
Noah touched her sleeve.
“Miss Sterling.”
She glanced down.
The boy held out a small memory card.
“I copied something before the feed went dark.”
“What?”
“A file your father opened yesterday.”
“It has your name on it.”
Aria took the card.
Noah swallowed.
“There is another name in the file.”
“Evelyn Sterling?” Dante asked.
“No.”
Noah looked at Aria with frightened sympathy.
“Dante Rossi.”
Dante became still.
Noah pointed to the date encoded in the file title.
“It was created twenty-three years ago.”
Aria’s gaze shifted from the card to Dante.
She was twenty-two.
The file had been created before she was born.
Dante took the card and inserted it into an isolated computer.
A single scanned document appeared.
At the top was the seal of a private adoption agency that had closed after a fire.
Beneath it were three lines.
INFANT FEMALE.
BIOLOGICAL MOTHER: EVELYN MARIE VALE.
AUTHORIZED GUARDIAN UPON MATERNAL DEATH: DANTE ANGELO ROSSI.
Aria stopped breathing.
Dante stared at the document as if it were written in blood.
He had been thirteen years old when it was signed.
He had never met Evelyn Sterling.
He had never heard the name Evelyn Vale.
May you like
Yet someone had appointed him guardian of Aria before she was born.
And at the bottom of the page, beside Victor Sterling’s signature, was the signature of Dante’s murdered father.
