Chapter 6 - THE SISTER IN THE SHADOWS
The silence in the bunker shifted from terrifying to suffocating.
The beam of the dropped flashlight rolled across the floor, casting long, warped shadows against the concrete walls.
“Sister?” Matteo breathed, staring blindly into the dark. “Camille is my sister?”
I knelt quickly, picking up the flashlight and aiming it back at the paper in his trembling hands.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said, my mind racing. “Camille is Marcus Sterling’s daughter. She has his last name. She grew up in his house.”
“Read it again,” Eleanor whispered weakly from her cot.
Matteo read the words aloud, his voice cracking. ‘My heart breaks leaving my daughter in the hands of a monster.’
He looked at Eleanor. The old woman’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Your mother had a brief affair with Marcus Sterling before she married your father,” Eleanor confessed, her voice barely a rasp in the thinning air. “When she got pregnant, Marcus refused to claim the child. He was married to someone else. To avoid a scandal, your mother gave the baby to Marcus’s wife, who couldn’t have children. They raised Camille as their own.”
“My father didn’t know?” Matteo asked, stumbling back a step.
“Vincenzo never knew. But Marcus did. And he hated your mother for it. He hated that she moved on, married a more powerful man, and had you.”
The horrific puzzle pieces slammed into place.
Camille wasn’t just a gold-digger planted to secure a mafia alliance. She was the secret daughter of Matteo’s mother. The woman who had been planning to marry Matteo was his own half-sister.
A wave of profound nausea washed over me. I looked at Matteo.
The ruthless, untouchable boss of the Chicago syndicate looked violently ill. He dropped the paper as if it burned him, backing against the cold steel door, his hands gripping his hair.
“She knew,” Matteo gasped, staring at the floor. “Camille knew. That’s why she wanted to destroy the blanket. Why she hated you, Eleanor. She didn’t want me to remember my mother.”
“Because she thinks your mother abandoned her,” I realized softly.
Matteo’s head snapped up. “She was going to marry me, Sophie. She was willing to marry her own brother just to take control of the Ricci empire and destroy Marcus.”
“She’s damaged, Matteo,” Eleanor said gently. “Marcus raised her. He poisoned her against your mother. He told her she was thrown away.”
Suddenly, the air in the room felt noticeably heavier. Leo coughed from his wheelchair, his chest heaving slightly.
“Soph? It’s getting hard to breathe,” my brother said, panic rising in his young voice.
I rushed to his side, gripping his hands. “Take shallow breaths, Leo. It’s okay. We’re going to get out of here.”
I looked back at Matteo. The revelation had shattered him, but the sound of Leo’s cough snapped the mafia boss back to reality. The devastating truth of his bloodline would have to wait.
“We have maybe thirty minutes before the carbon dioxide levels become lethal,” Matteo said, his eyes hardening with a desperate resolve.
He walked back to the metal panel he had pried open earlier.
“Vince welded the external vent. But there’s a secondary intake pipe that runs under the floorboards, connecting to the old prohibition tunnels beneath the estate.”
“Can we open it?” I asked.
“Not from up here. The grate is bolted down with industrial steel.” Matteo looked down at his tailored suit, then at his handgun. “But I can blow the bolts.”
“In an airtight room?” I cried. “The sound wave will rupture our eardrums, and the ricochet could kill one of us!”
“We suffocate in thirty minutes, Sophie. I’ll take the risk.”
Matteo grabbed a heavy wool blanket from a supply shelf. “Cover Leo. Put your hands over his ears and press his face into your chest. Do not let him look up.”
I did exactly as he said, throwing the heavy blanket over my brother and burying my face into his shoulder. I clamped my hands tightly over his ears and closed my eyes tightly.
“Eleanor, cover your ears,” Matteo commanded.
I heard him step into the center of the room. I heard him take a deep breath.
Then, the world exploded.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Four deafening shots fired in rapid succession. The sound was trapped in the concrete box, amplifying into a concussive shockwave that rattled my teeth and sent a sharp spike of pain through my skull. The smell of cordite instantly filled the suffocating air.
Silence fell. My ears were ringing violently.
“Sophie!” Matteo’s muffled voice called out.
I threw off the blanket.
Matteo was on his knees, tearing away a heavy steel grate from the floorboards. Below it was a dark, narrow shaft.
And immediately, a rush of cool, stale air blew upward into the bunker.
I gasped, my lungs expanding greedily as oxygen flooded the room. Leo took huge, gulping breaths, coughing as the fresh air hit his chest.
“We have air,” Matteo said, dropping the grate. He looked exhausted, his hands covered in grease and dust.
“Can we climb out through there?” I asked, moving toward the hole.
“It’s too narrow for an adult,” Matteo said. “And Leo can’t walk.”
“But we won’t suffocate,” I said, feeling a surge of hope. “We just have to wait for someone to find us.”
“Marcus Sterling’s men are upstairs, Sophie,” Matteo said grimly. “If they finally get this door open, they aren’t coming to rescue us. They’re coming to finish the job.”
He looked down the narrow, dark tunnel.
“There’s only one person small enough to crawl through that pipe and reach the surface,” Matteo said slowly.
He turned his head and looked directly at my twelve-year-old brother.
Leo froze in his wheelchair.
“Me?” Leo squeaked.
“Absolutely not,” I said fiercely, stepping in front of my brother. “He’s paralyzed from the waist down, Matteo! He can’t crawl through a tunnel!”
“He has immense upper body strength from his physical therapy, Sophie,” Matteo said, his voice urgent but pleading. “I’ve seen him do pull-ups on the bars. The pipe goes straight for twenty yards, then opens into the basement storage room.”
“No!” I shouted.
“Sophie, listen to me,” Matteo grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look into his eyes. “If Marcus opens that door, I will die protecting you. But there are twenty men out there. I can’t stop them all. Leo is the only one who can get out.”
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“To do what?” I cried.
“To find the grandfather clock,” Matteo whispered. “The ledger is inside. If Leo finds it and gets it to the police, Marcus is finished. It’s the only way we survive tonight.”
