Chapter 2 — The Maid Who Knew Too Much

Sophia reached for my gun before I could turn it back toward the grille.

I caught her wrist.

“Take your hand off it.”

“If you shoot them, whoever has Lily will hear about it before you reach the stairs.”

Below us, Damian picked up his phone and walked toward the door. Camila followed, pausing to finish her whiskey.

I watched them leave.

Then I pushed Sophia against the stone wall.

“Who is Thomas?”

She looked at the gun, then at me.

“My brother.”

“Your application said you had no family.”

“My application was a lie. My name is Sophia Hayes.”

“And cleaning my house?”

“That part was real.”

I pressed the barrel more firmly against her ribs.

“Try again.”

“I worked for a private investigations firm. Financial fraud, missing people, background checks. Thomas was a forensic accountant. Eight months ago, he disappeared while examining payments connected to your shipping companies.”

She reached slowly into her apron pocket.

I took the folded photograph before she could open it.

A young man sat chained to a metal chair. His head hung forward. Blood covered the front of his shirt. A newspaper had been placed on the floor beside him.

I recognized the date. Five months earlier.

“Who sent this?”

“An encrypted address. There were two more. Every time I got close to a company or a name, another photograph arrived.”

“Did they ask for money?”

“They told me to stop looking.”

“So you came here.”

“The payments led to your organization. Costa’s company hired the people who followed Thomas. I couldn’t get near Damian, but your household agency was recruiting.”

Three months. She had spent three months carrying coffee into rooms where men discussed the brother she believed they had kidnapped.

“The passage?” I asked.

“Renovation plans in the estate archive. I found a maintenance diagram behind a newer survey. The entrance to this landing was nailed shut. I loosened it last week.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody talks honestly while the maid is standing beside them.”

I lowered the gun an inch.

“Did you send the warning in Sicily?”

She frowned.

“What warning?”

Either she was an excellent liar or that question genuinely confused her.

I could not afford to decide yet.

Footsteps sounded in the study. We both went still.

Nico entered and checked the windows. His radio crackled.

“Search the old service areas,” Damian said. “She hasn’t reached the gate.”

“Understood.”

Nico left the study door open behind him.

Sophia waited until his footsteps faded.

“They’re going to find this entrance.”

“There’s another way out.”

“The eastern wine cellar?”

I looked at her.

“You’ve been busy.”

“I thought I might need to leave quickly.”

“You could have left before I arrived.”

Her eyes dropped to the photograph in my hand.

“I heard them say Thomas would be at the terminal. I couldn’t walk away from that.”

I handed it back.

“Help me get Lily out. I’ll help you find him.”

“Alive.”

“If he’s alive when we get there.”

She studied my face, dissatisfied with the answer but unwilling to accept a prettier lie.

“Then we should go.”

We descended past the library to the cellar. I opened the inner door while Sophia watched the stair behind us.

A flashlight beam swept across the passage above.

I drew her through and closed the door.

Someone tried the handle.

Sophia stopped breathing. I kept one hand against the door and the pistol ready in the other.

“Locked,” a man said.

“Get the keys.”

We moved.

At the cellar’s far end, I slid a wooden rack aside and reached beneath the lowest shelf. The hidden bolt resisted. Sophia knelt beside me, lifting the sagging panel enough to free it.

The door opened onto cold air and darkness.

We pulled the rack back into place from inside. Seconds later, metal rattled behind us.

The men had reached the cellar.

Sophia pressed her palm over her mouth. I kept her moving down the narrow tunnel until a bend swallowed the sound.

Only then did I switch on my small flashlight.

Fresh boot marks crossed the dust.

I crouched. Two sets, both going toward the exit. Neither belonged to us.

“Have you used this?”

“No.”

I inspected the old door ahead. Its inner bolt had already been drawn back.

“Someone has.”

Sophia glanced behind us.

“Do we go back?”

I pictured Damian’s men entering the cellar.

“We keep going. Quietly.”

The tunnel ended beyond the eastern wall. I checked the opening before letting Sophia climb out. Rain covered the noise of our footsteps as we crossed to the garage beneath the dunes.

Inside, I took the keys to a twenty-year-old sedan my father had refused to sell.

Sophia leaned against the workbench. Her sleeve had darkened further.

“Let me see your shoulder.”

“We don’t have time.”

“If you’re bleeding through the uniform, we don’t have time to ignore it.”

The cut was shallow, caused by glass. I washed it and secured a dressing from the garage kit. She sat rigidly while I worked.

“Does that hurt?”

“Less than having a gun pushed into it.”

“That was your other side.”

She gave me a look. I almost smiled.

Then my burned shoulder pulled as I reached for the tape.

She noticed.

“You’re injured.”

“I’m driving.”

“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

I handed her the kit and opened the car.

We cleared the estate using the maintenance road. No alarm sounded. No headlights followed.

For the first time since I had entered the house, we were beyond Damian’s immediate reach.

Sophia took a phone from her apron.

“That isn’t yours.”

“It belonged to the man who searched the laundry room. He put it down while he checked the cupboards.”

“You stole it?”

“He was looking for me. Asking seemed unwise.”

She opened a saved diagram of the river terminal.

“Southern maintenance entrance. Lower office. Service channels beneath the loading floor.”

I watched the wet road.

“Locked?”

“The phone? No.”

“A man hunting you leaves an unlocked phone with the exact plans you need.”

Her fingers stopped.

“I know how it sounds.”

“Together with an open escape tunnel, it sounds like someone wants us to reach that warehouse.”

“Then why go?”

“Because they have Lily. We can suspect the route and still need what’s at the end of it.”

Sophia studied the diagram again, enlarging a small symbol beside the lower office.

“What is it?” I asked.

She pulled a second folded sheet from her pocket. A photocopy, worn soft along the creases.

The same symbol appeared in the margin: a square divided by a diagonal line, with three dots beneath it.

“Thomas used this in his working notes,” she said. “It meant he’d checked a location himself.”

“Where did you get that sheet?”

“In the last envelope they sent me.”

I looked from the paper to the phone.

Whoever had prepared our route knew exactly what would make her follow it.