Chapter 1 - The Ghost Behind the Mahogany Shelf
The sound did not vanish into the heavy fabric of the drapes,
nor did it fade into the steady downpour drumming against the high arched windows of the estate.
It hung in the damp air of the private study,
sharp,
raw,
and drenched in an agonizing terror that made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
"Romi,"
the voice whispered a second time,
dragging the childhood diminutive through a throat scarred by years of silence.
Nobody had called me Romi since the autumn I turned twenty-one,
the bitter year my mother was declared lost at sea off the rocky cliffs of Marblehead,
the year my father drove two silver bullets into the skull of the man who had failed to bring her home.
Mia’s fingers tightened like small iron claws into the sleeve of my coat,
her tiny knuckles turning stark white under the amber glow of the desk lamp.
She did not scream,
she did not cry,
she merely stood on her bruised toes,
her trembling body pressed flat against the rough tweed of my trousers.
Behind her,
the fourteen-month-old infant let out a soft,
gurgling sigh in her sleep,
her cheek mashed against the threadbare woolen shawl that kept her bound to her sister’s frail shoulders.
"Mr. Duca,"
Mia whimpered,
her breath smelling of sweet condensed milk and cold tap water,
"is the lady going to hurt my mama?"
"No,"
I whispered,
the word tearing out of my chest with a ferocity that surprised even myself.
I reached out with my left hand,
placing my palm gently over Mia’s tangled hair,
anchoring the child to the floor while my right hand drifted instinctively toward the underside of my lapel,
where the cold steel of my Kimber forty-five rested against my ribs.
I did not draw the weapon,
because pulling iron in front of children was a line I had sworn never to cross in this house,
but every muscle along my spine locked into combat readiness.
I rose to my full height,
stepping around the heavy mahogany desk that had belonged to three generations of Duca men,
and walked toward the west wall.
The bookcase towered twelve feet toward the coffered ceiling,
lined with leather-bound first editions,
medical treatises from the nineteenth century,
and architectural blueprints of Boston that dated back to the Civil War.
Seventeen years earlier,
on the night my mother’s memorial service emptied the Cathedral of the Holy Cross,
my father,
Silas Duca,
had stood before these very shelves with a glass of rye whiskey in his hand.
He had summoned two master masons from Chicago,
men who did not speak English,
and paid them five times their worth to install a reinforced vault behind the mahogany woodwork.
When they were finished,
he had the entrance sealed with an electromagnetic deadbolt tied to a hidden mechanical release,
swearing on his father’s grave that the chamber was nothing more than a private sanctuary for family heirlooms.
Three months later,
those two masons died in a warehouse fire in South Boston,
and the secret of the west wall remained buried with Silas when cancer finally consumed his black heart four years ago.
I stood three inches from the seventh shelf,
where a row of gold-leaf volumes of Dante’s Inferno sat untouched beneath a thin layer of dust.
"Romi,"
the voice gasped again,
weaker this time,
the sound muffled by several inches of reinforced steel and dense plaster.
"I am here,"
I said,
my voice dropping to a gravelly baritone that vibrated against the wood.
I reached out,
hooked my fingers behind the leather spine of Dante’s third volume,
and pulled it forward until a sharp metallic click echoed through the hollow base of the shelf.
Deep inside the wall,
the hum of a hydraulic piston hissed like an angry serpent releasing its venom.
Mia gasped,
clutching the vacuum handle as if it could shield her from the impossible machinery waking up before her eyes.
The entire center section of the bookcase,
weighing well over six hundred pounds,
trembled,
parted from the wall with a tearing groan of aged varnish,
and swung forward on heavy bronze pivots.
A blast of frigid,
stagnant air rushed into the study,
carrying the unmistakable stench of iron,
rubbing alcohol,
and damp stone.
Behind the shelves stood a steel-reinforced security door,
its heavy deadbolt thrown back,
its surface marred by long,
jagged scratches that looked sickeningly like fingernails clawing against an impenetrable barrier.
The door was ajar by less than two inches.
I drew my pistol,
clicking the safety off with the softest flick of my thumb,
and kicked the door inward.
The hinges shrieked in protest,
revealing a room no larger than an interrogation cell,
lit only by the erratic flicker of an electric storm lantern sitting on an overturned plastic milk crate.
Against the far wall,
curled on a stained hospital mattress laid directly upon the bare concrete foundation,
was a woman.
Her hair was completely silver,
hanging in matted,
greasy ropes across her gaunt cheeks,
and her wrists were bound loosely to an iron radiator pipe with frayed yellow nylon rope.
She wore a faded linen dress that looked like it had been tailored two decades ago,
now hanging off her skeletal shoulders like a shroud draped over a graveyard monument.
She lifted her head,
her sunken gray eyes catching the light from my office,
and I felt the entire room tilt beneath my polished leather shoes.
Those eyes were my eyes.
The high cheekbones,
the cruel curve of the brow,
the slight asymmetry of the jaw that I looked at every morning in the shaving mirror,
all of it belonged to the woman lying in the filth.
"Mother,"
I breathed,
the word tasting like ashes and old church incense.
Elena Duca blinked through cracked,
swollen eyelids,
a ragged cough rattling deep in her hollow chest.
"Romi,"
she wheezed,
her voice trembling with an agonizing urgency that cut straight through the shock paralyzing my limbs.
"Do not look at me,
my son,
do not waste a second on an old ghost.
You must run to the infirmary,
down the back stairs,
before the bleeding stops.
Grace...
May you like
Grace would not give them the access codes,
and they beat her until she stopped moving."
