Chapter 4 - The House Manager Who Knew the Tunnels
Richard did not flee toward the gates.
That was the first thing Emily understood.
The second was that nobody else seemed to.
Security teams spread across the grounds while wind erased tracks almost as fast as they formed.
Emily stood at the library window watching flashlight beams cut through the snow.
Nicholas found her there.
“You should be resting.”
“You say that a lot.”
“You ignore it a lot.”
She turned.
“Richard knows the property better than your men think.”
Nicholas crossed his arms.
“Explain.”
“He used to brag about it. Said this house had service passages built during Prohibition.”
Nicholas’s expression changed.
“He told you that?”
“He liked reminding staff he knew things we didn’t.”
Nicholas called Dario immediately.
Ten minutes later, they opened a hidden panel behind shelving in the old wine room.
A narrow brick passage ran beneath the mansion toward the carriage house.
Richard had used it.
Boot prints marked the dust.
So did something else.
A fresh cigarette butt.
Nicholas picked it up with a handkerchief.
“Richard doesn’t smoke.”
Dario’s eyes hardened.
“Someone was waiting for him.”
The passage led to the old carriage house near the eastern boundary.
Emily was not allowed into the tunnel, but that did not stop her from standing at the wine-room entrance wrapped in a blanket and listening to the radio traffic. Every few seconds, static cracked through the old stone room.
“East corridor clear.”
“Fresh prints at the lower junction.”
“Boss, we found the carriage-house hatch.”
Nicholas’s voice came next. “Nobody goes alone.”
Emily realized he sounded different over radio. Colder. Less human. Efficient in a way that suggested years of dangerous practice.
Rosa came down carrying tea.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Maybe everybody is right.”
Emily accepted the cup anyway.
Rosa lowered her voice. “When Mr. Grimm gets like this, stay out of the way.”
“Like what?”
“Quiet.”
Emily almost laughed. “He’s always quiet.”
Rosa shook her head. “Not like this.”
The radio crackled again.
Dario: “We have signs of a second person.”
Emily’s fingers tightened around the tea.
A minute later Nicholas emerged from the passage with dust on his black shirt and a cut across one knuckle.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Old brick.”
“Did the brick swing first?”
He looked at her.
Rosa immediately found something fascinating about the ceiling.
Nicholas said, “You’re feeling better.”
“Enough to notice bad lies.”
For one second, tension cracked. Then Dario called from below and Nicholas turned serious again.
The passage led to the old carriage house near the eastern boundary.
Inside, they found Richard’s vest, a burner phone, and a bloodied handkerchief.
No Richard.
The burner phone contained one outgoing message.
FAILED. SHE TALKED.
The reply was simple.
THEN BRING HER.
Emily read it twice.
Nicholas took the phone from her.
“You’re not leaving the house.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
“But I am not hiding upstairs while everybody else decides what happens.”
Nicholas looked at her sharply.
“You almost died twelve hours ago.”
“And that means I lose my vote?”
“It means I’m not interested in scraping you out of another snowbank.”
Emily’s voice softened.
“I know.”
For one second, the room changed.
His anger was not at her.
It was fear wearing armor.
Then Dario interrupted.
“We found a vehicle track beyond the east wall.”
Nicholas turned back into the man everyone feared.
“Where?”
“Access road toward the old quarry.”
The storm eased by afternoon.
Police could finally reach the estate.
Nicholas did something Emily did not expect.
He handed them the ledger.
All of it.
Dario looked surprised.
“You know what’s in those books.”
Nicholas’s gaze did not move.
“Yes.”
“You’re giving law enforcement access to family financial records.”
“I’m giving them evidence of theft.”
“What if they find more?”
Nicholas looked at him.
“Then I answer for more.”
Emily heard that.
So did everyone else.
By evening, police found Richard’s abandoned SUV near the quarry.
The passenger seat was covered with blood, but not enough to suggest a fatal injury.
A second set of tire tracks led away.
Nicholas received a call at 8:40 p.m.
He listened without speaking.
Then he put the phone on speaker.
Richard’s voice filled the study.
“You should have stayed out of this, Grimm.”
Nicholas leaned against the desk.
“You threw a nineteen-year-old woman into a blizzard.”
“You think this is about a maid?”
Emily stood in the doorway.
Richard continued.
“You still don’t understand what you inherited.”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.
“Where are you?”
A laugh.
“Ask your father.”
“My father is dead.”
Another laugh.
“That’s what he wanted you to believe.”
The line disconnected.
No one moved.
Emily looked at Nicholas.
His face had gone completely still.
Dario immediately began tracing the call, but Richard had routed it through three disposable towers.
Nicholas stared at the dark phone screen as if it had opened a door he had spent years sealing shut.
Emily said, “You don’t have to tell me.”
He looked at her.
“That’s unusual.”
“What is?”
“Someone in this house not asking for information.”
“I’m curious. I’m not entitled.”
Nicholas sat heavily in the chair behind his father’s old desk. It was the first time Emily had seen him look tired.
“My father vanished after a meeting with three men. Victor Morrow was one of them. My uncle Carlo was another.”
“And the third?”
Nicholas rubbed his thumb across the edge of his watch. “Thomas Turner.”
Emily’s breath stopped.
“My father?”
Nicholas looked up sharply.
“You said your father’s name was Thomas?”
“I didn’t.”
“No. You didn’t.”
Emily felt suddenly cold again.
“My mother told me he died before I was born.”
Nicholas and Dario exchanged a look.
Dario said, “Boss, if that’s the same Thomas—”
Nicholas cut him off. “We verify first.”
Emily stood. “Verify what?”
Nicholas did not answer quickly enough.
She understood the omission.
“My father worked for your family.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But you think he did.”
“Yes.”
Emily looked toward the snowy windows. The story she thought had started with a broken vase had just reached backward into a life she barely remembered.
His face had gone completely still.
She said, “Is there any chance your father is alive?”
Nicholas answered without looking at her.
“No.”
May you like
Then, after a long pause:
“But there was never a body.”
