Chapter 4 - EMMA’S FATHER
Elena made a sound I had never heard from another human being.
Not a scream.
Something beneath it.
She pushed past me into the empty room.
“Emma?”
No answer.
She looked behind barrels.
Under the table.
Inside cabinets too small to hold a child.
“Emma!”
I grabbed her shoulders.
“Elena.”
She fought me.
“Get off me!”
“Elena.”
“My baby is gone!”
“I know.”
“You said she was safe!”
That one landed.
I had no defense.
I released her.
Tony arrived with two armed men.
“Lock the house down physically,” I ordered. “Nobody leaves. Search every room.”
He nodded.
I turned back to Elena.
“Marco called me.”
She froze.
“He told me to ask who Emma’s father was.”
Elena’s face changed.
That was enough.
“Who?”
“This is not the time.”
“It became the time when somebody took your daughter.”
She looked at me with pure hatred.
Then she whispered, “Your brother.”
I actually laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes the brain rejects reality with noise.
“My brother died seven years ago.”
“I know.”
“Luca?”
“Yes.”
My younger brother.
Wild.
Charming.
Always in trouble.
Killed in a car crash outside Boston.
I stepped back.
“You and Luca?”
“Not for long.”
“You never told me.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know.”
“He would’ve told me.”
“No, Dominic. He wouldn’t.”
I stared at her.
She wiped her face.
“Your father hated me.”
“My father barely knew you.”
“He knew enough.”
She inhaled shakily.
“When I got pregnant, Luca wanted to leave.”
“Leave what?”
“This.”
She gestured at the mansion, meaning far more than the walls.
“The business. The family. Everything.”
I remembered fights between Luca and my father before the crash.
I had assumed they were about money.
“You’re saying my father knew about Emma?”
“Yes.”
“Was Luca’s crash an accident?”
Elena looked away.
That silence was worse than an answer.
My phone buzzed.
Tony.
Movement in north wing nursery.
I ran.
The nursery hadn’t been used in twenty years.
Not since Luca and I were children.
The door stood open.
Inside, Emma sat on the floor beneath the old rocking horse.
Alive.
Unhurt.
Holding her rabbit.
Elena rushed past me and dropped to her knees.
“Emma!”
The girl wrapped both arms around her neck.
“Mommy.”
Elena kissed her face again and again.
I scanned the room.
No attacker.
No broken window.
No obvious entry.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
Emma pointed.
“Aunt Vivien.”
Elena went still.
“She brought you?”
Emma nodded.
“She said hide-and-seek.”
My hands closed into fists.
“Where did she go?”
Emma pointed toward the closet.
Tony opened it.
Empty.
Then he found the panel.
A narrow servants’ passage behind the wall.
One I hadn’t known existed.
Ravenwood was built in 1912.
Rich families once preferred servants who could move without being seen.
Tony shined a light down the passage.
“Goes toward the master wing.”
Vivien’s rooms.
Emma tugged my sleeve.
“Uncle Dom?”
My heart stopped.
Nobody called me that.
Not even Luca.
“What did you say?”
“Daddy said Uncle Dom.”
Elena closed her eyes.
I crouched.
“When did Daddy say that?”
Emma pointed into the dark passage.
“He’s in there.”
Tony raised his gun.
Elena grabbed Emma.
I took the flashlight.
We entered the passage.
Twenty yards in, we found a small hidden room.
A chair.
A mattress.
Food wrappers.
A laptop.
Someone had been living inside my walls.
On the mattress sat a framed photograph.
Luca.
My dead brother.
Beside it was a recent photo of Emma at the park.
And taped beneath that—
a picture taken three days ago.
A man in a baseball cap holding Emma’s hand.
May you like
His face was turned toward the camera.
My dead brother’s face.
