Chapter 2 - THE SECRET BEHIND THE SECURITY ALARM
The alarm had been ringing for exactly twelve seconds when Dante Moretti ordered every door in his mansion locked.
"Nobody leaves this property."
His voice was cold enough to silence the dining room.
Elena stood beside her chair, staring at the silver lighthouse necklace lying on the white tablecloth.
Three years.
For three years, she had imagined her younger sister dying alone inside a burning warehouse.
Now someone was telling her Sophie had survived.
And the men who might know why she had disappeared were sitting at her husband's dinner table.
"Where is my sister?" Elena demanded.
Vivian wiped her cheeks.
"Elena, please. We need to get somewhere safe."
"Answer me."
"She was alive three days ago. That's all I can promise."
Raymond Keene pushed back his chair.
"This is absurd. We're entertaining accusations from a woman who disappeared overseas five years ago and suddenly returns with a dead girl's jewelry?"
Vivian flinched.
Dante noticed.
"Raymond, sit down."
Raymond remained standing.
"I think we should contact security."
"Security is already coming."
At that moment, the dining room doors opened.
Adrian Cole, Dante's head of security, entered with two guards.
"Sir, we have a breach in the lower records corridor."
Dante frowned.
"What kind of breach?"
"Someone entered using an executive access card. When our surveillance operator tried to identify the person, the cameras went dark."
Elena looked at Raymond.
His right hand was still inside his jacket.
"Show us your hand," she said.
Raymond stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
"Your hand, Raymond."
Dante stepped closer.
"Do it."
Slowly, Raymond withdrew a black leather cardholder.
Inside was a silver security card bearing the Moretti crest.
Adrian's expression changed.
"Sir, that's a master-access credential."
Raymond immediately protested.
"I've held security clearance here for fifteen years."
"Not for the lower records corridor," Adrian replied.
A terrible silence followed.
Charles Weller set down his wineglass.
"Perhaps we should avoid turning a misunderstanding into a spectacle."
Elena looked at him.
"Funny how everybody wants to avoid a spectacle now."
Charles said nothing.
Elena turned to Adrian.
"Who activated the alarm?"
"Our surveillance operator, Mara Delgado. She discovered the camera interruption and triggered the manual emergency alert."
"Then she may have just saved evidence someone wanted destroyed."
Dante studied his wife.
For the first time that evening, he seemed to understand that the humiliation he had planned had become irrelevant.
"Adrian," he ordered, "secure the records corridor. Nobody touches anything."
Raymond's face hardened.
"You don't understand what you're doing, Dante."
"Then explain it."
Raymond looked toward Charles.
It was a small movement.
But Elena saw it.
And she knew Dante had seen it too.
Twenty minutes later, Elena entered the estate's security office.
Dante followed her.
Vivian came behind them, clutching her crimson silk dress as though she wanted to disappear inside it.
Raymond and Charles had been separated into different rooms.
Mara Delgado, a young security technician with tired eyes, stood beside a wall of monitors.
"Mrs. Moretti," she said, "there's something I need you to see."
On one screen was a recording from the lower corridor.
A man wearing a maintenance uniform had entered using Raymond's security clearance.
His face was partly obscured by a baseball cap.
He approached a locked storage cabinet containing archived visitor records.
Then the screen went black.
"Did he get inside?" Dante asked.
"No. The alarm interrupted him. Our guards found him trying to leave through the service entrance."
"Who is he?"
"He claims he's an outside contractor. He won't identify who hired him."
Elena studied the frozen image.
"Why would anybody want visitor records?"
Mara hesitated.
"That's what I thought you should see."
She opened another recording.
"This footage is from three nights ago."
The screen showed the estate's eastern entrance.
The timestamp read 9:18 p.m.
A black Moretti sedan approached the gate.
Its headlights illuminated a woman standing beside the guard station.
She wore a brown wool coat.
Her hair was shorter than Elena remembered.
There was a pale scar along the side of her neck.
But when she lifted her face toward the camera, Elena recognized her immediately.
"Sophie."
The name escaped her lips like a prayer.
She stepped toward the monitor.
Her younger sister was alive.
Not a rumor.
Not a photograph from years ago.
Alive.
Sophie spoke briefly with the guard.
Then the passenger door of the sedan opened.
A tall man stepped out.
Elena stopped breathing.
Dante.
Her husband walked directly toward Sophie.
He placed one hand against her shoulder, said something, and guided her into the car.
Mara paused the recording.
Elena slowly turned.
Dante had gone completely still.
"You knew."
He didn't answer.
"You knew my sister was alive."
"Elena—"
"Three days ago, you stood beside her."
Dante looked toward Vivian.
She lowered her eyes.
Elena understood immediately.
They had both known.
They had both kept it from her.
And tonight, Dante had brought Vivian to dinner as though their biggest problem was an old romance.
Elena felt something inside her finally break.
"Eight years," she whispered. "Eight years I've been your wife."
Dante reached toward her.
She moved away.
"Don't touch me."
"There's a reason I couldn't tell you."
"Then give me one reason that matters more than letting a woman believe her sister burned to death."
Dante's expression darkened with pain.
"Because Sophie begged me not to."
Elena stared at him.
"What?"
"She believed someone inside this house was helping the people who wanted her dead."
Mara looked down.
Vivian began crying again.
Dante continued quietly.
"I brought her here because she had nowhere else to go. She stayed at the east cottage while we tried to find somewhere safer."
"Where is she now?"
"She left before morning. She realized somebody had discovered she was here."
Elena's voice shook.
"And you didn't tell me?"
Dante looked directly into her eyes.
"She made me promise I wouldn't until I knew who was watching her."
Elena turned back toward the screen.
There was something Sophie had been carrying.
A small brown envelope.
She handed it to Dante before entering the car.
"Where's that envelope?"
Dante hesitated.
Then he reached inside his jacket.
Elena almost laughed.
The same jacket he had worn while inviting his former lover into her dining room.
From its inner pocket, he removed a faded brown envelope.
He placed it on the desk.
Inside was an old brass pocket watch.
Elena recognized it instantly.
Her father's watch.
The one Sophie used to carry in her handbag because it reminded her of home.
The glass was cracked.
The hands had stopped at 11:47.
The exact minute Sophie had called Elena on the night of the fire.
Beneath the watch was a folded piece of paper.
Elena opened it.
Six words were written in her sister's familiar handwriting.
"Rosa knew who opened the door."
Elena looked at Dante.
"Rosa died in that fire."
Dante nodded slowly.
"I know."
Elena stared at the watch.
Then she noticed something written on the back of the paper.
One short sentence.
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"Ask Lidia why Rosa never came home."
And suddenly Elena realized her family's tragedy might have been connected to someone who had worked inside the Moretti mansion for twelve years.
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