CHAPTER 4 THE LOCKED ROOM
The brass key opened a narrow door behind the nursery bookcase.
Nathaniel had lived in Hartwell Mansion for most of his life.
He had played in those rooms as a child.
Yet he had never known the hidden door existed.
Marcus pulled the bookcase aside.
Dust floated through the beam of his flashlight.
A stone staircase descended into darkness.
Vivienne refused to follow.
Nathaniel ordered two guards to remain with her.
Lucas stayed downstairs with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bell.
Elena led Nathaniel and Marcus into the passage.
The air smelled of damp wood and old paper.
At the bottom, they found a room no larger than a closet.
A metal table stood against one wall.
Several cardboard boxes were stacked beneath it.
A portable medical refrigerator sat in the corner.
Its power cord had been cut.
Nathaniel opened the first box.
Inside were hospital records.
Some carried the Saint Catherine’s logo.
Others were signed by physicians Nathaniel had never met.
Elena picked up a file.
“This is mine.”
The first page identified her as Marina Cruz.
The next page listed her as deceased.
Cause of death was written as postpartum hemorrhage.
A death certificate was attached.
Nathaniel stared at it.
“This is the document I received.”
Elena turned several pages.
A second certificate appeared.
This one carried her real name.
It stated that Elena Reyes had abandoned her infant after accepting a payment of two million dollars.
Nathaniel looked up sharply.
“Did you receive that money?”
“No.”
“I received twenty-five thousand dollars for medical expenses.”
“The rest disappeared.”
Marcus opened another box.
He found photographs of Elena entering the mansion through the service entrance.
The images had dates and times printed along the bottom.
Someone had watched her every movement.
Then Marcus found a black ledger.
Each page contained coded payments.
Security contractors.
Hospital administrators.
A private adoption attorney.
A pharmaceutical company.
One entry had been circled in red.
L.H.
First birthday.
Dosage adjustment.
Nathaniel’s face became rigid.
“What dosage?”
Elena pointed toward the refrigerator.
Marcus forced it open.
Several empty glass vials lay inside.
Their labels had faded, but one word remained visible.
DIGOXIN.
Nathaniel knew the drug.
His mother had taken it for a heart condition.
In the wrong dose, it could stop a child’s heart.
Lucas had nearly died two days before his first birthday.
Doctors blamed an undiagnosed cardiac irregularity.
Vivienne had refused an autopsy investigation after he recovered.
Nathaniel remembered sitting beside the hospital bed.
He remembered Vivienne whispering that some children were not meant to survive.
At the time, he thought she spoke from fear.
Now the memory felt like a confession.
Marcus photographed everything.
Nathaniel turned to Elena.
“How long have you known this room existed?”
“Three months.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the day after I found it, someone left a dead bird in Lucas’s bed.”
Nathaniel’s face darkened.
Elena’s voice broke.
“There was a note beneath it.”
“What did it say?”
She removed a folded piece of paper from her pocket.
Nathaniel opened it.
THE FIRST WARNING WAS FOR YOU.
THE SECOND WILL BE FOR THE BOY.
Nathaniel looked back toward the staircase.
“Vivienne did this.”
Elena hesitated.
“I thought so.”
“You thought so?”
“There is another name in the ledger.”
Nathaniel returned to the circled entry.
Below the payment code were two initials.
V.H.
And M.R.
May you like
Nathaniel slowly turned toward Marcus Reed.
His trusted security chief was holding a gun.
