Chapter 11 - The Secret Behind the Plaster
The frail figure stepping out of the dust-choked service tunnel was not an intruder, nor was it a ghost from the estate's forgotten past. It was Sarah, our mother, wrapped in a faded wool blanket that dragged along the brick floor. Her face was chalk-white, hollowed out by the pneumonia that had supposedly kept her bedridden in the guest suite upstairs. I dropped the corner of my sweater, my mouth falling open in sheer disbelief as Lily stirred softly on my back, letting out a tiny, sleepy sigh against my shoulder.
"Mom?" I whispered, the word catching on the dry air of the underground cavity.
Matteo lowered the iron crowbar an inch, his shoulders tensing beneath the tailored black wool of his suit jacket. He looked from Mom to me, his dark eyes narrowing as the pieces clicked together with terrifying clarity. He hadn't just hired a cleaning woman; he had unknowingly trapped a desperate mother who was forced to use the estate's forgotten architectural quirks to navigate her duties and check on us without drawing the ire of the estate's strict management firm.
"Sarah," Matteo said, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a heavy, rumbling cadence that echoed off the damp masonry. "What in God's name are you doing down here?"
Mom leaned against the rough brick wall, gasping for breath as she clutched the gray blanket tighter around her thin shoulders. "The night shift... the agency said if I missed a single hour of the library detail, they'd dock the rent for the quarters," she wheezed, her voice thin and ragged. "I couldn't leave the girls alone upstairs, but I couldn't afford to lose the keycard either. When the fever spiked, I thought I could rest in the old ventilation alcove while Mia finished the vacuuming."
I rushed forward, ignoring the chill of the damp floor, and threw my arms around Mom's waist, careful not to jostle Lily sleeping securely in her cross-body sling. Mom’s skin felt burning hot, her breath coming in shallow, shuddering gasps that made my chest tighten with an old, familiar terror. I looked up at Matteo, expecting to see the cold, unyielding fury of a wealthy homeowner whose privacy had been violated by domestic desperation.
Instead, Matteo stood frozen, the harsh lines of his trimmed beard softening as he stared at the woman leaning against his ancestral wall. His hand tattoos flexed around the handle of the crowbar before he let the heavy tool drop to the floor with a dull, echoing thud. He didn't yell about trespassing, property codes, or breach of contract. He stepped closer, shedding his professional armor in the dim lamplight, and reached out to steady Mom by her elbow before she could sink to the masonry.
"Dr. Hayes told me you were resting upstairs in the East Wing guest suite," Matteo said, his tone low and searching, stripped of all its corporate command. "How long have you been sneaking through these service shafts?"
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"Months," Mom whispered, coughing weakly into her sleeve. "Ever since the central heating failed in the north annex. Mr. Duca, please don't report this to the board. We needed that paycheck to keep the lights on."
Matteo looked down at me, then at Lily, and finally at the exhausted woman holding onto my shoulder for dear life. A heavy silence settled over the underground chamber, broken only by the steady drip of distant water. The mystery of the library wall was solved, but the real test of what kind of man Matteo Duca truly was had only just begun.
