Chapter 3 - The Locked WingFor the first time since Evelyn had met him, Gabriel Romano looked afraid.
It was there only for a heartbeat, quickly buried under discipline and rage, but Evelyn saw it. So did Titan. The dog’s body stiffened until every muscle seemed carved from black stone.
“Victor,” Gabriel said.
Victor was already speaking into his phone. “Lock down the east wing. Nobody leaves the third floor. Sweep every room.”
“No,” Gabriel snapped.
Victor stopped.
Gabriel’s eyes stayed on the glowing window. “No armed sweep.”
“With respect—”
“I said no.”
The command landed with enough force to silence everyone standing in the snow.
Rosa crossed herself again, but this time her hand trembled.
Evelyn looked from Gabriel to the window. “Who is Lucia?”
Gabriel did not answer.
Vanessa did.
“His sister,” she said softly. “Dead, unfortunately. Years ago.”
The word unfortunately sounded polished, rehearsed, and empty.
Titan growled again.
Vanessa stepped back.
Gabriel turned toward the mansion. “Rosa, take Evelyn to the blue guest room.”
“I can walk,” Evelyn said.
“You are bleeding.”
“I said I can walk.”
“And I said blue guest room.”
Evelyn almost argued, but the pain in her palm had started to pulse. More than that, the image of the small hand behind the glass kept replaying in her mind.
Dead women did not press hands to windows.
Unless something inside that room had never been properly buried.
Rosa guided Evelyn through a side entrance into the mansion. Titan followed despite two guards trying to stop him. One look from Gabriel ended the attempt.
Inside, the Romano estate felt different at night. During the day, it was all marble, chandeliers, polished banisters, and staff moving in carefully rehearsed silence. At night, its beauty turned watchful. Portraits seemed to lean from the walls. Long corridors swallowed footsteps. Every closed door felt less like privacy than concealment.
Rosa led Evelyn up the servants’ staircase, away from the grand foyer.
“You should not have come here,” Rosa whispered.
Evelyn glanced at her. “To the mansion?”
“To this job.”
“I needed work.”
“There is work in safer places.”
“Safe places rarely hire women with court records and missing references.”
Rosa stopped on the landing. “You have a court record?”
“Not criminal. Public. Worse, sometimes.”
Rosa studied her face. Something like pity moved through her expression, but she buried it quickly. “Do not trust what this house shows you.”
“I figured that out around the time someone shot through my window.”
“No. I mean the house itself. The walls are old. The family older. Some rooms remember things people have paid very much to forget.”
They reached the second floor.
Titan halted.
His head turned toward a narrow corridor branching east.
The air there seemed colder.
A velvet rope blocked the entrance. Beyond it, dust lay untouched on the runner carpet.
Rosa’s voice dropped. “No one goes that way.”
“Someone did tonight.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Rosa looked toward the ceiling, as if the house might answer. “God help us, I do not know.”
A sound came from beyond the velvet rope.
Soft.
Scraping.
Like fingernails against wood.
Titan surged forward. Evelyn grabbed his collar with her uninjured hand, not to hold him—she could not have held him if he truly wanted to move—but to ask him.
“Wait,” she whispered.
The dog stopped.
Rosa stared at Evelyn as if she had just performed a miracle.
The scraping came again.
Then a child’s voice, thin through the walls.
“Is he gone?”
Evelyn’s blood turned cold.
Rosa went white. “No.”
Gabriel appeared at the bottom of the corridor with Victor and two guards behind him. His face had returned to its marble calm, but his eyes were violent.
“Who spoke?” he asked.
No one answered.
The child’s voice came again.
“Please don’t let Calvin take the dog.”
Evelyn looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel looked at Calvin’s name as if it had become a weapon.
Victor recovered first. “This could be a trick. Someone planted a recording.”
Evelyn said, “Recordings do not sound scared of a leash.”
Gabriel crossed the velvet rope.
Rosa grabbed his sleeve. “Mr. Romano.”
He looked down at her hand.
She released him instantly. “Please. That wing has been sealed since Miss Lucia died.”
“Apparently not sealed enough.”
He continued down the corridor.
Titan followed.
Evelyn followed Titan.
Victor caught her arm. “You stay here.”
Her injured hand burned. Her patience burned hotter.
“Take your hand off me.”
Victor leaned close. “You have no idea what you are walking into.”
Evelyn looked at the corridor, at Gabriel disappearing into darkness, at Titan’s body moving low and alert.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
She pulled free and stepped over the rope.
The east wing smelled of dust, cedar, and something sour beneath both. The lights did not work. Gabriel used his phone as a flashlight, its beam slicing across covered furniture and portraits turned to face the wall.
At the end of the corridor stood a white door with a brass handle.
Lucia Romano’s room.
The handle moved from the inside.
Gabriel stopped breathing.
“Lucia?” he whispered.
The door opened two inches.
A child’s eye appeared in the gap.
Not a ghost.
A girl.
Thin, pale, no older than seven.
She looked at Titan first.
Then at Evelyn.
Then at Gabriel Romano, the feared man of Lake Geneva, as if he were the monster under her bed.
“Are you my uncle?” she asked.
Gabriel took one step back as though shot.
Behind them, Vanessa’s voice floated from the darkness.
“That is impossible.”
The child flinched.
Titan turned and snarled.
Evelyn finally understood.
May you like
The dog had not chosen her by accident.
He had chosen the first person in that house who listened when fear spoke.
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