Chapter 4 - The Hidden Prisoner
The grand sitting room was not an untouched shrine.
The expensive velvet curtains were drawn tight, but the thick layer of dust on the hardwood floor was completely disturbed. There were fresh footprints leading directly to the massive, built-in mahogany bookshelf covering the far wall.
Dante marched across the room. He grabbed the edge of the heavy wooden bookshelf and pulled. It wasn't bolted to the wall; it swung open silently on hidden, oiled hinges.
Behind the bookshelf was a reinforced steel door, slightly ajar.
The sterile, sickening smell of medical antiseptic hit Dante’s lungs. He pushed the steel door open and stepped into a hidden, soundproof medical suite built directly into the walls of his own mansion.
Sitting up in a clinical medical bed, illuminated by a single warm lamp, was a woman.
She was devastatingly thin, her skin pale and her wrists secured with soft medical restraints. Her beautiful brown hair was longer, messy, and lacking its usual shine.
It was Carmela.
She wasn't dead. She hadn't burned in the car bombing eighteen months ago. She was alive, heavily sedated, and secretly imprisoned in the walls of her own home.
"Carmela?" Dante whispered, his voice cracking in pure, unadulterated agony as he dropped to his knees beside the bed.
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Carmela weakly turned her head. When her exhausted brown eyes locked onto her husband’s face, a choked, desperate sob escaped her lips. "Dante... you found me."
👉 Dante held his weeping wife, completely unprepared for the terrifying truth of who had locked her in this nightmare.
