Chapter 9 - The Red Door Below the Hill
The boathouse sat exactly where the lullaby had led him.
Half-hidden below the sloping edge of the property, painted a faded red, tucked away where the lake path curved and the trees blocked a direct view from the road. Naomi used to call it “the secret place” when she was a child. Marcus would only know about it if she had once trusted him enough to show him.
That thought made Vincent’s jaw harden.
He left Lily with the house manager again and drove alone.
This time he didn’t go through the main door. He circled wide, checked the windows, found one boarded from the inside and one faintly lit through a crack. Then he heard it.
Three hard knocks from somewhere below floor level.
Not random.
Intentional.
Vincent forced the side door and stepped into a damp storage room littered with old ropes, rusted tackle, and broken folding chairs. Another knock came. Then another. Under his boots, the warped wood floor vibrated faintly.
He dropped to one knee and found the metal pull-ring hidden under a frayed floor mat.
A trapdoor.
Locked from above.
It took him less than ten seconds with a pry bar to rip it open.
The smell that rose out of the darkness below was cold, stale, and human.
“Naomi?” he called.
Silence.
Then a choked sob.
“Dad?”
He was down the narrow ladder so fast his shoulder scraped the wall. The cellar below was crude and windowless, barely more than a storage pit with a cot and a bare bulb. Naomi sat on the floor beside the cot, wrists zip-tied, face pale, mouth bruised where tape had been ripped away. But she was alive.
Alive.
For one moment the years collapsed, and Vincent saw not his grown daughter but the little girl who used to come running to him after bad dreams.
He dropped to his knees in front of her.
“Hey,” he said, voice breaking. “Hey, I’ve got you.”
Naomi tried to smile and started crying instead.
“I knew Lily would remember,” she whispered.
Vincent cut her bindings with shaking hands.
Then Naomi grabbed his wrist with surprising force.
“Dad—listen to me. Marcus isn’t after the trust anymore.”
May you like
Vincent stared at her.
“He found something worse,” she said. “And if we don’t get home first, he’ll destroy it.”
