Chapter 1 - THE WALL THAT SHOULDN’T HAVE A DOOR
Twenty-nine-year-old Rachel Monroe needed her job at Gabriel DeLuca’s Philadelphia estate. Her late father’s medical bills had left her mother struggling with a mortgage, and the DeLuca household paid better than anywhere else Rachel could find.
During a formal dinner, Gabriel’s fiancée, Vivian Cross, publicly humiliated Rachel after she fell carrying a tray. Broken glass cut Rachel’s knee, but Gabriel noticed something everyone else missed: the glass shattered after Rachel fell.
Someone had smeared butter beneath her shoe.
Gabriel quietly stopped Vivian from forcing the injured maid back to work. He also noticed Rachel repeatedly staring toward the old service pantry.
Earlier that evening, Rachel had entered that pantry for wine and heard three knocks from behind what appeared to be a solid wall. An elderly woman whispered from the other side, begging Rachel not to tell Vivian.
Minutes later, Vivian appeared.
Soon afterward, Rachel was deliberately tripped.
Gabriel questioned Rachel privately and discovered Vivian had threatened Rachel using detailed information about her mother’s mortgage. He then took Rachel back to the pantry, where fresh scratches revealed a shelving unit had recently been moved.
Behind it stood an old steel security door.
A lipstick mark matching Vivian’s shade stained the keypad.
When knocking came from inside, the imprisoned woman recognized both Rachel and Gabriel. Vivian arrived and panicked when Gabriel exposed the door.
Then an envelope slid beneath it.
Gabriel’s name was written in handwriting he did not recognize, followed by words that shattered everything he believed about his childhood:
For my son, Gabriel. If they told you your mother died, open this.
May you like
Before Gabriel opened it, the woman behind the steel door said he needed to see her face.
And Vivian looked more afraid of that than of anything else.
