Chapter Nine: The Rose Garden Tunnel
Skylar found the open panel behind Carmela’s dressing room.
Not a broken lock.
A hidden one.
The kind built for old houses and older crimes.
Behind it, a narrow stone passage sloped downward.
Cold air moved through it.
Rose scent.
Earth.
Rain.
Bianca had told the truth.
The estate had veins.
Skylar took a flashlight and descended.
The passage opened near the conservatory, then split toward the winter rose garden. Mud marked the floor.
Fresh.
Lorenzo had not escaped the estate.
He had gone under it.
Skylar followed the drag marks.
Outside, rain fell hard over the garden.
Carmela stood near the frozen fountain, barefoot in the mud, her night robe soaked through. She held a dead rose stem like a candle.
Lorenzo Moretti stood behind her with a pistol.
His arm was bleeding. His suit was torn. His grandfather smile was gone.
“Doctor,” he said.
Skylar stepped out into the rain.
“Let her go.”
“She was already gone.”
Carmela trembled.
“Skylar?”
“I am here.”
Lorenzo pressed the gun closer to Carmela’s side.
“You keep standing between people and consequences.”
“She is not your consequence.”
“No. She is his.”
Skylar lifted both hands.
The rain soaked her hair and bandage. The wound on her cheek pulsed under the wet cloth.
“You used the tunnel.”
“Matteo was generous.”
“He was terrified.”
“Same thing.”
Carmela whispered, “Antonio?”
Lorenzo laughed.
“Even better. She thinks I am the dead husband.”
Skylar’s voice sharpened.
“She thinks you are a ghost because you turned her mind into a haunted house.”
For the first time, Lorenzo’s face changed.
Anger.
Real.
“You do not know what power costs.”
“I know what cowards charge.”
His grip tightened on Carmela.
Skylar saw the mud under his shoes.
Uneven.
He was favoring the injured side.
She looked at Carmela.
Then at the dead rose stem.
Carmela understood.
Maybe not the whole plan.
Enough.
The old woman let the rose stem fall.
Lorenzo glanced down.
Skylar moved.
She threw herself into his injured arm, not his gun hand. His body turned with the pain. The shot fired into the greenhouse glass.
Carmela swung a brass garden lantern.
It struck Lorenzo’s shoulder.
He stumbled.
Skylar shoved Carmela behind the fountain.
Lorenzo recovered fast and caught Skylar by the throat.
Her back hit stone.
Air vanished.
“Always the shield,” he hissed.
Skylar clawed at his wrist.
Then Dominic’s voice cut through the rain.
“Let her go.”
He stood at the garden entrance in an open shirt and bloodstained bandage, one hand braced on a cane he hated. He looked too pale to be alive and too angry to die.
Lorenzo smiled.
“You can barely stand.”
Dominic’s eyes moved to Skylar.
Not rescuing.
Trusting.
“Yes,” he said. “But she can.”
Skylar drove her knee into Lorenzo’s injured side.
He loosened.
She twisted under his arm and sent him crashing into the fountain edge.
He hit hard.
This time, he stayed down.
Dominic swayed.
Skylar reached him before he fell.
Carmela picked up the fallen gun backward.
“I helped.”
Skylar laughed once.
Breathless.
Shaking.
Then Dominic collapsed into her arms.
And for the first time, she chose to hold him.
