Chapter 5

Smoke reaches me before the alarm does.

I wake on the east-wing sofa with my throat burning and the taste of ash on my tongue. Orange light moves beneath the door. For half a second, I think someone has come to release me.

Then the first gunshot cracks through the corridor.

I run to the door and twist the handle. Locked.

Of course it is locked. Roman made sure of that.

“Open the door!” I strike the wood with both palms. “I’m still in here!”

Boots pound toward me. Relief rises before I hear the guard on the other side.

“Lady Elena?”

“Yes. Get the key.”

Another burst of gunfire cuts through the estate. Then Vivienne’s voice reaches us from farther down the corridor. “Roman already had her moved. The east wing is empty. We need you downstairs.”

My hands freeze against the door.

The guard hesitates. “I heard her.”

“You heard the pipes. Roman sent Marco for her ten minutes ago.” Vivienne’s voice sharpens. “Do you want another De Luca elder dead while you argue with me?”

I hit the door again and shout until smoke tears the sound apart in my chest. The guard says something I cannot hear.

Then his footsteps follow hers away.

For one second, I stand there waiting for him to come back.

He does not.

The alarm finally begins. Its scream fills the room while smoke rolls across the ceiling and sinks toward me. I drag a chair to the door and strike the handle until my palms split, but Roman’s lock does not move.

A radio crackles somewhere in the corridor. His voice breaks through the static.

“Protect Vivienne and the elders. Seal every restricted door. No one enters the east wing until the shooters are contained.”

Seal every restricted door.

He knows where he put me.

“Roman!” His name leaves me before pride can stop it. “Roman, I’m here!”

The radio answers with gunfire and another order I cannot understand.

I say his name once more. Nothing.

The smoke is low enough now that my eyes stream. I cover my mouth with the hem of my dress and stumble toward the windows, but iron security shutters have already dropped over the glass.

Roman did not order anyone to kill me.

He only locked me in a room, sealed the doors, and told everyone to protect someone else.

The difference will not keep me alive.

I stop calling his name.

My mother’s brass key strikes my chest as I crawl beneath the smoke. She gave it to me before my wedding and made me promise never to remove it. I thought it opened one of her old boxes. I never asked why the teeth were too large for any ordinary lock.

Inez knew.

Find the passage.

The fireplace stands against the inner wall. I pull away the screen and search the blackened stone until my fingers find a narrow keyhole behind the iron grate.

The key fits.

For one terrible moment, it refuses to turn. Heat presses against my back, and flames catch the curtains near the door. I twist harder until the metal cuts my palm.

The lock gives.

A section of stone shifts inward, releasing cold, damp air. The passage is completely dark, but it is open.

I crawl through and drag the panel closed behind me.

The alarm becomes a distant pulse inside the wall. I can barely see the steps beneath my hands, yet I keep moving downward, away from the room where my husband left me.

Then a gunshot explodes somewhere in the tunnel.

Inez screams my name.