Chapter 1 - THE BLACK DUST BEHIND THE PORTRAIT
Megan Cole had worked as a maid at Sebastian Rinaldi’s Chicago estate for seven months when his fiancée, Vanessa Calloway, ordered her to move the enormous memorial portrait of Sebastian’s late mother, Isabella.
Megan’s knee was swollen and her ribs already hurt, yet Vanessa forced her to lift the ninety-pound frame.
When strange black coal dust fell onto Megan’s hands, Sebastian appeared.
He immediately knew something was wrong.
The Rinaldi mansion had not used coal since 1971.
Behind Isabella’s portrait, Megan revealed an old coal lift that had supposedly been sealed decades earlier. She admitted she had discovered it that afternoon and overheard Vanessa speaking with an unknown man about Sebastian signing something and an “original” that needed to disappear.
Inside the lift, Sebastian found evidence that someone had been practicing his signature.
Then his attorney revealed an even more dangerous development: a petition had been filed to declare Sebastian temporarily incompetent, which would activate an emergency clause transferring control of Rinaldi Holdings to his uncle, Daniel Rinaldi.
But the conspiracy became personal when Vanessa’s purse appeared inside the hidden lift.
Inside it were Megan’s stolen apartment key, several disposable phones, and a photograph of Megan’s eight-year-old daughter, Lily, with a warning written on the back.
Then Sebastian discovered an old cassette recorded on the night his father died.
On it, Antonio Rinaldi confronted Daniel over the family trust and mentioned secret records belonging to Isabella. A younger Vanessa could also be heard in the room.
Hidden inside the cassette case was a Union Station parcel-storage ticket for Locker 118.
Before Sebastian and Megan could investigate, they learned Daniel had taken Lily from school using a forged authorization.
Then Vanessa spoke through the coal shaft.
She demanded that Sebastian bring the contents of Locker 118 if he wanted Lily returned.
But her final revelation was even worse.
Megan had never been hired by accident.
Someone had deliberately placed her inside the Rinaldi estate.
May you like
And Antonio Rinaldi had apparently hidden a photograph of Megan with Isabella’s records twenty-two years earlier.
From somewhere beneath the mansion, Lily screamed for her mother.
