Chapter 4
We reached the east glasshouse before dawn.
The estate had changed around it.
Vines covered the outer walls.
Blackened beams still cut through the broken roofline.
From a distance it looked dead.
That was what everyone had been meant to believe.
The service chain was new.
Thomas was right.
I looked at Adrian.
He said nothing.
I cut the chain.
Inside, the air smelled wrong.
Not mold.
Smoke.
Soap.
Recent human life.
My men noticed too.
We moved deeper.
The main glass chamber was empty except for dead vines and fire-blackened benches.
Then Emma pointed toward the floor.
“Boss.”
A footprint.
Small.
Female.
Fresh.
My chest tightened.
I followed it toward a collapsed potting wall.
Behind a row of cracked planters was a narrow door I had never seen before.
Adrian moved.
One of my guards stopped him.
I looked back.
“You know this door.”
His jaw tightened.
“It’s an old service passage.”
“Where does it go?”
“Storage.”
Thomas shook his head.
“No.”
Adrian stared.
Thomas continued.
“It goes under the winter room.”
I opened it.
Stone stairs descended into darkness.
The pendant felt heavy in my hand.
Elena hated underground spaces.
Always had.
When we were first married, she refused to use my grandfather’s wine cellar because she said rooms without windows felt like graves.
Now someone had hidden her beneath glass.
I descended.
At the bottom was a steel door.
Locked from outside.
I stopped.
No more guessing.
No more relatives telling me grief had made me unreasonable.
Someone had built a prison inside my estate.
I looked at Adrian.
“You told me she burned.”
He said nothing.
I put the key ring Thomas found beside the chain into the lock.
The third key turned.
I opened the door.
A woman sat beneath a narrow cot.
Older.
Thinner.
Terrified.
But alive.
Elena looked up at me.
For a second neither of us moved.
May you like
Then she whispered my name.
And three years of mourning became rage.
