Chapter 3 - THE HOUSE OF SECRETSThey didn't put me in a police car. They shoved me into the back of a black armored SUV with tinted windows so dark not a single ray of Chicago’s midday sun could penetrate.
The ride was suffocating. Dante sat across from me, his massive hands resting calmly over a leather briefcase, his expression entirely unreadable. Every time I tried to speak, to explain about Clara, to beg for a chance to call my dying sister, Dante merely lifted a single finger.
"Save your breath for Mr. Valente, Ms. Vance," he said quietly. "You’ll need every ounce of it."
When the vehicle finally ground to a halt, the heavy steel gates of the Valente estate swung open automatically. The sprawling, Gothic-revival mansion looked less like a home and more like a fortress designed to keep the world—and justice—at bay. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter, their breath pluming white in the freezing air.
They dragged me not through the grand mahogany front doors, but down a set of exterior stone stairs leading to a subterranean wing beneath the east conservatory.
The air down here was different—damp, smelling faintly of old earth, polished stone, and high-end security hardware.
Adrian Valente pushed open a heavy iron-reinforced door, revealing a room that looked like a high-tech command center mixed with a private study. Monitors lined one entire wall, playing live feeds of every corner of the estate. In the center of the room sat a single velvet chair.
And tied securely to that chair, pale, shivering, and sobbing hysterically, was my sister, Clara.
"Clara!" I screamed, lunging forward, but Dante’s iron grip caught my shoulder, slamming me back against the stone wall.
"Elena!" Clara shrieked, her eyes wide with sheer terror. "Make them stop! I didn't do anything! I swear I didn't know!"
Adrian walked over to the mahogany desk, poured himself two fingers of dark amber whiskey, and turned around slowly, leaning against the edge of the wood.
"She says she didn't know, Elena," Adrian said softly, taking a slow sip of his drink. "She says she was just a courier. That someone paid her fifty thousand dollars in cash to drop a small, insulated package behind the estate gate thirty minutes before my daughter was found dying in the snow."
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Adrian paused, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
"The only problem is... the person who paid her used a burner phone registered to a shell corporation owned by my most trusted business rival, Victor Moretti."
