Chapter 2 – A SCREAM IN THE GREENHOUSE

Dominic didn’t waste time yelling.

He grabbed the heavy wrought-iron fireplace poker from the corner of the sunroom and swung it like a baseball bat.

The tempered glass of the sunroom door shattered into a million glittering pieces.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered, kicking the remaining shards out of the wooden frame.

I pulled my thin cardigan tighter around my shoulders and stepped through the broken door into the freezing night. My heart was hammering against my ribs. I thought about my mother, sitting in her recliner across town, entirely dependent on my paycheck. If I died out here, she had no one.

But I couldn’t leave Dominic. Not when a little girl named Mia was out there in the dark.

“The groundskeeper’s cabin is half a mile through the woods,” Dominic said, his voice deadly quiet as we moved across the manicured lawn. “Bianca has kept it locked up since my father died.”

“Why would she hide them there?” I asked, struggling to keep up with his long strides.

“Because nobody ever goes near it.”

We plunged into the dense tree line. The darkness was absolute. Dominic pulled a small flashlight from his pocket, cutting a thin yellow beam through the fog.

Suddenly, a loud, piercing crack echoed through the woods.

Gunfire.

Dominic broke into a sprint. “Mia!”

I ran blindly after him, branches whipping against my face and tearing my apron. We crested a small hill, and there it was.

The old groundskeeper’s cabin.

The front door was wide open, swaying in the wind. A single bulb flickered on the porch.

Dominic drew a black handgun from his shoulder holster. He didn’t look like a grieving father anymore. He looked like the ruthless Chicago boss the newspapers wrote about.

He stepped onto the porch and moved inside. I followed him, my hands shaking so badly I could barely form a fist.

The cabin was wrecked.

Chairs were overturned. A cheap suitcase was ripped open, women’s clothes scattered across the dusty floor.

On the floor near the kitchen sink lay the woman who had brought Mia.

She was clutching her shoulder, bleeding heavily onto the linoleum. She looked up at Dominic, her eyes wide with terror.

“Where is she?” Dominic demanded, kneeling beside her.

“They took her,” the woman sobbed, gasping in pain.

“Who took her? Was it Bianca?”

The woman shook her head frantically. “No. No, it wasn’t a woman. It was him. The man from the house.”

Dominic grabbed her uninjured arm. “Which man?”

“The one with the silver scar on his neck,” she cried. “He said he was coming to help us. He said Bianca sent him with the money. But he lied.”

My blood ran cold.

A silver scar on his neck.

I knew that man. It was Vincent, Dominic’s most trusted lieutenant. The man who had been standing at the door checking coats during Mrs. Moretti’s birthday dinner.

“He took her toward the old greenhouse,” the woman choked out. “Please. He’s going to kill her.”

Dominic stood up. His face was a mask of pure, terrifying rage.

But as we turned to leave, I saw something under the overturned kitchen table.

I knelt down and pulled it out.

It was a piece of white construction paper. A child’s drawing done in crayon.

I held it up to the flickering light.

It was a picture of a house. But not just any house. It was a drawing of the Moretti estate.

And standing in front of the house were three stick figures.

A tall man in a black suit. A little girl in a yellow coat.

And a woman with brown hair, wearing a maid’s apron.

Above the woman in the apron, Mia had written: The nice lady who opens the door.

I stopped breathing.

“Dominic,” I whispered.

He turned around.

“She didn’t just arrive today,” I said, my hands trembling as I showed him the drawing. “Mia drew this. But I never saw her today.”

Dominic stared at the paper. “What are you saying, Elena?”

“I’m saying I gave a little girl in a yellow coat a glass of water at the back door three weeks ago. She was asking for you. But someone told me she was the gardener’s daughter.”

Dominic’s eyes widened. “Who told you that?”

I swallowed hard. “Vincent.”

Before Dominic could respond, my cell phone buzzed in my apron pocket.

I pulled it out. The caller ID made my stomach drop.

It was my mother’s home care nurse.

I answered it with shaking fingers. “Hello?”

“Elena?” The nurse’s voice was strained, panicked. “Elena, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop them.”

“Stop who? What are you talking about?”

“There are men here. They kicked in the front door. They’re taking your mother.”

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