Chapter 6
The East Cellar smelled of stone and dust.
Lucinda walked in first.
Defiant again.
She refused to let anyone see uncertainty twice.
“This is your great revelation?”
Her heels clicked against the floor.
“A moldy room?”
Sebastian ignored her.
Preston entered behind her.
Two bodyguards remained at his shoulders.
The white crack from the photograph still cut across the far wall.
Same place.
Same shape.
Sebastian stopped.
His father had stood here.
Alive.
Three days after Sebastian mourned him.
Lucinda watched his face.
“Still want to pretend your childhood was stolen?”
Her voice sharpened.
“You got twenty-seven years with him.”
“I got twenty-three years of wondering why he died.”
She smiled coldly.
“I got twenty-three years wondering why he wished I hadn't been born.”
Sebastian looked at her.
“Maybe both of us were lied to.”
Lucinda’s eyes flashed.
“Don't compare us.”
She pointed toward him.
“You were loved.”
Her voice cracked for one syllable.
Then hardened again.
“I was hidden.”
Orlando found the saint carving.
Old wood fixed into the stone.
Behind it sat a narrow cavity.
Empty.
Preston exhaled almost imperceptibly.
Sebastian heard it.
“You expected something.”
Preston smiled.
“I expected your treasure hunt to embarrass you.”
Then Elisa’s nanny appeared at the cellar entrance.
Sebastian turned sharply.
“Why are you here?”
Clara held something wrapped in a handkerchief.
“Elisa found this.”
Sebastian’s expression changed.
“In her jacket pocket.”
Lucinda looked toward the bundle.
Her face went pale.
Clara opened it.
A small brass key.
Old.
Blackened with age.
Lucinda whispered:
“No.”
Sebastian looked at her.
“You recognize it.”
“No.”
Too quick.
Elisa had apparently picked it up from the carpet beside the shattered vase without understanding what it was.
The victim Lucinda humiliated had accidentally preserved the one object Lucinda desperately needed destroyed.
Sebastian took the key.
Orlando stared.
“That opens Salvatore’s reliquary.”
“Where?”
He pointed toward the stone floor.
A narrow iron plate sat beneath the old cellar table.
Preston moved.
One step.
Bodyguards immediately blocked him.
He laughed.
“You people really are committed to this theater.”
Sebastian inserted the key.
The plate opened.
Inside sat a tiny metal box.
Lucinda’s hands began shaking.
Preston looked at her.
“Don't.”
Sebastian heard it.
Again.
That word.
Control.
He opened the box.
Inside lay an old microcassette.
No documents.
No records.
Only a voice.
Orlando found the surviving recorder stored nearby.
The tape crackled.
Then Salvatore Caradonna spoke.
Weak.
Breathing hard.
“If Sebastian hears this…”
Lucinda’s eyes filled despite herself.
“…tell him I did not reject Lucinda.”
She stopped breathing.
Preston’s jaw tightened.
Salvatore continued.
“I told her I would name her before every capo who mattered.”
Lucinda covered her mouth.
Then the tape shifted.
A scrape.
A cough.
And Salvatore’s voice became urgent.
“But Preston cannot know where this is.”
Every eye turned toward him.
May you like
Preston’s face went completely still.
The dead man had been afraid of the twenty-one-year-old standing outside his cell.
