Chapter 2 - The Woman Beneath the House
No one moved.
Rain hammered the tall windows while thunder rolled across the estate.
Damian stared at Mrs. Wren.
“My mother died in Switzerland.”
Mrs. Wren lowered her eyes.
“No, sir.”
Celeste suddenly ran toward the side corridor.
One of the guards caught her before she reached the door.
“Let go of me!” she shouted. “Damian, this is insanity!”
Damian’s gaze remained fixed on the housekeeper.
“Where is my mother?”
Mrs. Wren’s hands shook.
“Beneath the west wing.”
The words seemed impossible.
The Hawthorne mansion had been built more than a century earlier. It contained unused servant passages, wine cellars, storage vaults, and old underground rooms left from generations before.
Damian had explored them as a child.
Or he had believed he had.
Mrs. Wren led them through the library, where she pushed aside a carved wooden panel hidden behind a row of antique books.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
Elara immediately panicked.
“No.”
She backed away, gripping Damian’s coat around her shoulders.
“No, I can’t go down there.”
“You don’t have to,” Damian assured her.
He turned to Robert, his security chief.
“Stay with her. No one touches her.”
Damian took a flashlight and followed Mrs. Wren below.
Two guards brought Celeste behind them.
The air grew colder with every step. The elegant sounds of the mansion disappeared, replaced by dripping water and the low hum of hidden machinery.
At the bottom, Damian found a steel door fitted into the stone wall.
It required a fingerprint and six-digit code.
“Whose print?” he asked.
Mrs. Wren looked at Celeste.
Damian seized Celeste’s wrist and pressed her thumb against the scanner.
The light turned green.
The door opened.
Beyond it was not a cellar.
It was a private apartment.
There was a sitting room, a medical cabinet, several monitors, and a desk covered with documents. Security screens showed nearly every room in the mansion.
Someone had been watching the house.
Watching Damian.
Watching Elara.
On the far wall hung newspaper clippings about Elara’s disappearance. Photographs of Damian searching train stations, airports, hospitals, and foreign cities had been carefully arranged by date.
A chessboard sat on a table.
Most of its white pieces had been removed.
Only the king remained.
Damian entered the bedroom.
The bed was empty.
But a cup of tea was still warm.
“She was here,” Mrs. Wren whispered.
Damian pulled open a wardrobe.
Inside were expensive dresses in his mother’s size.
Eleanor Hawthorne was alive.
A hidden passage behind the wardrobe led farther beneath the estate.
The guards searched it, but the tunnel ended at an open metal hatch leading to the forest beyond the property walls.
She had escaped minutes earlier.
Damian returned to the desk.
There were financial records bearing Celeste’s signature, psychological evaluations of Elara, and medical reports from a private doctor.
One folder was labeled SUBJECT E.H.
Inside were photographs of Elara taken over three years.
Elara blindfolded inside a vehicle.
Elara unconscious in a hospital bed.
Elara sitting alone in a locked room.
Elara wearing the maid’s uniform.
Damian gripped the desk until the wood cracked beneath his fingers.
“What did you do to her?”
Celeste’s arrogance finally broke.
“I followed instructions.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother knew the truth.”
“What truth?”
Celeste looked toward the guards, calculating how much she should reveal.
Then she smiled bitterly.
“Elara was going to destroy your family.”
Damian stepped toward her.
“My wife disappeared two days before she was supposed to meet me in Paris. What had she discovered?”
Celeste remained silent.
Mrs. Wren opened a drawer and removed a small digital recorder.
“She discovered this.”
She pressed play.
Eleanor’s unmistakable voice filled the room.
“Our company cannot survive an investigation. The names in those files must never become public.”
A man’s voice answered.
“What about your daughter-in-law?”
“She has made her choice.”
“And Damian?”
“My son will grieve. Then he will recover.”
The recording crackled.
Eleanor continued.
“Take Elara to the clinic. When her memory becomes unreliable, bring her home under another name. Damian will never recognize the woman we turn her into.”
The recording ended.
Damian stood motionless.
Celeste looked at him.
“Your mother believed she was saving you.”
“No,” Damian said. “She was saving herself.”
Mrs. Wren reached under the desk and pulled out another folder.
This one bore Damian’s name.
Inside were copies of medical documents, trust agreements, and a photograph of Damian’s father, who had supposedly died in a boating accident twenty-two years earlier.
On the back, someone had written four words.
HE KNOWS WHERE SHE WENT.
Damian stared at the photograph.
“My father is alive too?”
Mrs. Wren began to cry.
“He has been trying to reach you for years.”
A telephone rang on the desk.
Everyone froze.
Damian answered it.
His mother’s voice came through the speaker.
“You should have stayed in London, son.”
“Where are you?”
“That no longer matters.”
“You imprisoned my wife.”
“I protected your inheritance.”
“You destroyed her.”
“No, Damian. Elara destroyed herself the moment she started asking questions.”
Damian looked at the hidden monitors.
“I will find you.”
Eleanor laughed softly.
“You spent three years searching for your wife while she lived beneath your feet. What makes you believe you can find me?”
The line went silent.
Then every monitor in the room turned red.
A countdown appeared.
Five minutes.
Celeste’s face filled with horror.
“She activated the fire system.”
Damian looked toward the ceiling.
“She’s going to burn the evidence.”
May you like
Then he remembered Elara was still upstairs.
And the countdown continued.
