Chapter 3 - The Servants’ PassageThe passage smelled like dust, old wood, and secrets.
I moved barefoot because my shoes made too much noise against the narrow floorboards. Leo rested against my shoulder now, wrapped in a nursery blanket I had snatched before stepping through the hidden panel. His breathing had steadied, but every few seconds his tiny body shuddered like he was remembering hunger even in sleep.
Behind the wall, gunshots exploded.
One.
Two.
Three.
Then shouting.
Then silence.
I forced myself not to turn back.
Lorenzo had told me right at the first split, left at the red pipe. The darkness swallowed every direction until I felt like I was walking inside someone’s throat. My free hand dragged along the wall, fingertips catching splinters and old nails.
Somewhere above me, footsteps pounded.
The mansion was waking.
No, not waking.
Revealing itself.
For weeks I had cleaned marble floors, polished silver frames, and scrubbed bathrooms bigger than the apartment I was about to lose. I had believed the Rossi estate was only a rich man’s fortress. Now, moving through its bones, I understood it was also a trap built by generations of people who expected betrayal.
Leo stirred.
“Shh,” I whispered, though he hadn’t made a sound. “Please, baby. Not yet.”
The word baby almost destroyed me.
Lily should have been warm against me. Lily should have been the one turning toward my chest. Lily should have been the reason my body ached and leaked and woke me crying before dawn.
Instead, I was carrying another woman’s son through a hidden passage while armed men hunted us.
The passage split.
I went right.
A narrow staircase descended into blackness. I felt for each step with my toes. My knees shook. The place where Darren had shoved me still flared with pain when I moved wrong, a deep lightning ache from hip to spine. I bit down hard enough to taste blood and kept walking.
Halfway down the stairs, a light appeared below.
Not from a bulb.
From a phone.
Someone was standing at the bottom.
I froze.
The figure lifted a finger to his lips.
A boy.
Matteo.
His face was streaked with dust and blood. One eye had swollen nearly shut. He clutched his left arm against his ribs, but he was alive.
I nearly sobbed.
“How did you—”
He shook his head violently. “Not here.”
He turned and limped ahead, moving like he knew every secret path in the house. I followed him past a rusted pipe, then stopped.
The pipe was red.
Left.
He nodded.
We entered a lower corridor lined with stone. The air changed, cooler and damp. Somewhere far above, alarms finally began to sound.
“Mr. Rossi?” I whispered.
Matteo’s lips trembled. “He told me to run.”
“Was he hurt?”
The boy did not answer quickly enough.
My stomach tightened.
“He was standing,” Matteo said finally. “When I left.”
Standing did not mean safe.
Standing did not mean alive.
We reached a thick wooden door with iron hinges. Matteo pulled a key from a crack in the stone, but his hand shook too badly to fit it into the lock.
I shifted Leo and took it from him.
The key turned.
The old chapel opened.
Moonlight slipped through a row of narrow windows near the ceiling. Dust floated in silver lines. There were six pews, a cracked statue of the Virgin Mary, and an altar covered in white cloth yellowed by age. Candles sat in brass holders, half melted but unused.
Matteo closed the door behind us and slid a bolt across it.
Only then did he collapse.
I lowered Leo carefully onto a folded altar cloth and knelt beside the boy. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I said I’m fine.”
His voice snapped like a frightened animal’s. Then shame crossed his face. “Sorry.”
I touched his shoulder gently. “You don’t have to be sorry for being scared.”
That did it.
His eyes filled, but he blinked the tears back with practiced force. He was twelve, maybe thirteen. Too young to know how to disappear. Old enough to have learned.
“What happened in the vent?” I asked.
He looked toward the chapel door.
“There are two sets of passages,” he whispered. “Old servant paths and newer security tunnels. Mr. Rossi knows the old ones. Ms. Serafina knows the new ones.”
“And someone was in the vent with you?”
“A man with gray gloves.”
“Did you see his face?”
Matteo nodded once.
The way he nodded made me afraid.
“Who was it?”
He swallowed.
“Dr. Bellini.”
I knew the name. Everyone in the estate knew the name. Dr. Bellini was Leo’s private pediatric specialist, the expensive miracle doctor who came at odd hours and left in black cars with tinted windows. He had examined Leo every day and declared each failure a mystery.
A mystery he had been creating.
Before I could speak, Leo woke with a small cry.
I moved to him instantly. He rooted weakly again, hungry despite exhaustion. My whole body tightened with grief and dread, but I lifted him, turned away from Matteo, and fed him beneath the blanket.
Matteo stared at the floor.
“He never did that before,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Swallow. I watched through the vent sometimes.” He sounded ashamed. “I wanted to know if he got better.”
“You cared about him.”
“Nobody else did. Not really.” He looked up. “Except Mr. Rossi.”
“And his aunt?”
Matteo’s face closed.
“What?” I asked.
He glanced toward the door again. “Ms. Serafina used to say babies are leverage.”
The word made my skin crawl.
“She said that?”
“Not to me. To Dr. Bellini. She said Lorenzo became useless after Mrs. Rossi died. Soft. Distracted. She said if Leo died slowly, everyone would blame grief and bad blood. But if Leo lived weak enough, Mr. Rossi would keep signing whatever she put in front of him.”
My blood went cold.
The real danger wasn’t standing in front of me.
It was already living inside his mansion.
Lorenzo’s sister had not wanted Leo dead quickly. She wanted him fading, fragile, permanently dependent, a weapon small enough to fit in a crib.
“Why tell me?” I asked.
Matteo’s eyes hardened in a way no child’s should.
“Because she sent my uncle away after he saw the first bottle.”
“What bottle?”
“The one they put in the milk.”
I looked down at Leo.
He was swallowing again, his little hand opening and closing against my skin.
“They were poisoning his food?” I whispered.
“Not poison like dead right away. Something to make him sleepy. Weak. Dr. Bellini said it would look like failure to thrive.”
I had heard that phrase from the kitchen women. Failure to thrive. Such a clean phrase for a child being starved by design.
A knock came at the chapel door.
Matteo turned white.
I pulled Leo close.
The knock came again.
Three soft taps.
Then Lorenzo’s voice.
“Mara. Open the door.”
Relief hit me so hard I nearly dropped the blanket.
But Matteo grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t,” he mouthed.
I stared at him.
From outside, Lorenzo spoke again.
“It’s me. Open the door.”
Matteo shook his head, eyes huge.
I understood.
The voice was Lorenzo’s.
But the boy had grown up inside these walls. He knew fear’s little details. He heard something I didn’t.
“Ask him something,” Matteo whispered. “Something only he knows.”
My heart hammered.
I moved closer to the door but kept the bolt locked.
“What did you call Leo before I left the nursery?” I asked.
A pause.
Too long.
Then the voice outside answered softly, “My son.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
Wrong.
Lorenzo had called him my lion.
The doorknob turned.
A man chuckled on the other side, no longer pretending.
“Smart maid.”
Then something heavy struck the door.
The bolt shook.
Leo cried out.
Matteo backed toward the altar.
The door shook again.
And from the opposite wall, behind the cracked statue, another panel slowly opened.
A woman stood there holding a candle.
May you like
Her face was pale, bruised, and painfully familiar from the portraits throughout the mansion.
Lorenzo’s dead wife looked at me and whispered, “Give me my son.”
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