Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Mirror
The north wing did not resemble the rest of Blackwood Manor. Where the other galleries were monuments to gilded wealth, this corridor was a stripped, clinical concrete passage smelling of damp lime and disinfectant.
I moved with creeping balance, my flashlight beam directed strictly at the floor. The humming grew louder as I approached the third door on the left.
It was a heavy reinforced steel door, painted industrial gray, fitted with a sliding meal hatch at knee level and a narrow vision slit of bulletproof glass. Above the handle, a digital keypad glowed amber.
I peered inside.
The room was illuminated by a single low-wattage heat lamp. It was furnished with a low platform bed, a stainless steel toilet, and a small wooden desk. The walls were covered entirely in acoustic foam padding, peeling at the corners.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, wrapped in an oversized gray wool hospital robe, was a woman.
She couldn't have been more than thirty, but her frame was skeletal, her long black hair matted with sweat. Her face—illuminated by the pale amber glare—took the breath from my lungs.
She was not Julianna Vale. She was Julianna's twin sister.
The same high cheekbones, the same sharp, aristocratic nose, and the same terrifying, mercury-gray eyes that Dominic and Noah carried. But across her throat, tracing from ear to ear, was a jagged, raised purple surgical scar—a tracheotomy that had been hastily performed and poorly healed.
I raised my knuckles and tapped twice against the glass. Tap. Tap.
The humming stopped instantly.
The woman’s head snapped toward the door. Her gray eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror. She scrambled backward on the mattress, her thin back hitting the acoustic foam, her hands coming up in front of her face.
"Kalliope," I whispered through the speaking grate. "Kalliope, I am not here to hurt you. Noah sent me."
The woman froze. Her hands slowly lowered, revealing eyes drowning in desperate, disbelieving madness. She crawled toward the door until her face was pressed against the glass.
"Noah...?" her voice was a wet, ragged hiss. "My... my baby? Is he alive?"
"Asleep in the nursery," I whispered, tears burning my eyes. "He threw a bronze horse at me today. But then he held my hand and told me you were crying in the dark."
Kalliope pressed her trembling palm against the glass. "Dominic thinks I died in the harbor four years ago. The car bomb... it wasn't meant for Julianna. It was meant for him. But Julianna was driving. I was in the passenger side."
"Who put you in this cell, Kalliope?" I asked, leaning close. "Who locked you in here?"
Kalliope’s eyes darted frantically toward the end of the corridor. "Marcus," she wheezed. "Dominic's brother. The underboss. He pulled me from the burning wreck before the police arrived. He told Dominic both sisters were vaporized. He’s been keeping me down here for four years... harvesting my signature for the family trusts."
She gripped the speaking grate. "The tea, girl! Did Dominic drink the tea tonight?"
"No," I answered. "Noah warned me. I poured it down the drain."
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Kalliope let out a choked, sobbing breath. "Marcus is convening the family council at noon tomorrow. If Dominic dies tonight, Marcus takes the sovereign seat and becomes Noah's legal guardian. And the moment Marcus signs the trust documents... he will put a bullet in the boy's head."
A heavy, metallic CLACK echoed from the entrance of the north wing. The double iron doors were opening.
