Chapter 6 - THE CELLAR UNDER THE ROSES
The Moretti estate went into lockdown.
Every vendor was rechecked. Guest deliveries were suspended. Matteo hired a private security firm from another city and replaced every code Marcus had ever known.
It still did not feel safe.
Grace understood why when Titan led her to the roses.
The south terrace overlooked a steep valley, and beneath it stretched a formal garden designed in geometric beds. Three hundred white roses had been planted for the wedding.
Titan ignored all of them.
He pulled Grace toward a stone retaining wall half-hidden behind climbing vines.
Nero followed.
The dogs began scratching.
Grace called Matteo.
They removed the vines and found a narrow iron door painted to match the stone.
The brass key from locker 214 opened it.
The air beyond smelled of earth, dust, and cold metal.
The missing south cellar.
Inside were old storage racks, empty crates, outdated security uniforms, and a workbench beneath a single bare bulb.
Grace saw the collars first.
Five of them.
Thick leather with small electronic housings.
Her stomach turned.
Matteo stood motionless.
On the shelves were training logs.
Titan. Nero.
Dates.
Responses.
The words were clinical.
Sound cue. Elevated agitation.
Sound cue plus handler approach. Defensive reaction.
Grace closed the notebook.
“We don’t need to read all of this.”
Matteo did.
His face grew harder with every page.
The goal had not been to train the dogs to attack randomly.
It had been to make them unreliable around selected staff, especially Luca.
“They were trying to isolate him,” Grace said.
Matteo nodded.
“If everyone believed the dogs were unstable, no one would question them being locked away.”
“And if Luca trusted the dogs more than security…”
“He would notice.”
They found more.
Invoices.
Shell company records.
Photographs of Luca’s car.
A maintenance report for the brake system dated the day before his crash.
The report claimed nothing had been changed.
A handwritten note on the back listed a part number.
Matteo’s hands shook for the first time.
Grace quietly took the paper before he tore it.
“We still don’t know what happened.”
“I know enough.”
“No,” she said. “You know enough to be furious. That is not the same thing.”
He turned on her.
“My brother is dead.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Grace’s face changed.
Matteo regretted the words instantly.
She stepped back.
“My mother died when I was fourteen,” she said. “My father left before the funeral. My grandfather raised me until his heart failed when I was twenty-three. I know exactly how grief can make a person think anger is evidence.”
The cellar went silent.
Matteo lowered his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need an apology. I need you thinking clearly.”
He looked at her.
No one in his household spoke to him like that.
That was precisely why he listened.
The investigators photographed everything. Police were contacted quietly, but Matteo insisted the estate not become a public spectacle before they understood the full scheme.
That decision lasted four hours.
At dusk, the local news received an anonymous tip that armed men were operating inside the Moretti estate. Reporters gathered outside the gates. Social media filled with rumors about organized crime, arrests, and a cancelled wedding.
Bianca called a press consultant.
Matteo called no one.
Then Dolores disappeared.
Grace noticed at dinner.
Her place in the staff room was empty.
Her phone went straight to voicemail.
Titan began pacing.
Nero stood at the service door and whined.
Grace found Dolores’s keys on the pantry floor.
Matteo organized a search.
Every room.
Every outbuilding.
Nothing.
Then Grace remembered the cellar.
They returned.
At first it looked unchanged.
Then Nero barked at the far wall.
Behind a movable storage rack was another door.
Locked from the outside.
Matteo kicked it open.
Dolores sat on the floor inside, wrists tied with plastic restraints. She was shaken but conscious.
Grace rushed to her.
“Who did this?”
Dolores swallowed.
“Marcus.”
Matteo’s eyes darkened.
“He came back?”
“He never left.”
She explained that Marcus had used an old maintenance tunnel leading from the hillside to the cellar. He had confronted her in the pantry, demanded Luca’s key, and dragged her below when she refused.
“He said he only needed until the wedding,” Dolores whispered.
“For what?” Matteo asked.
“I don’t know.”
Then she remembered something.
“He kept saying the ceremony had to happen. He said, ‘Once the papers are signed, it’s done.’”
Bianca.
Matteo closed his eyes.
The prenuptial agreement and corporate merger documents were scheduled to be signed privately on the wedding morning.
Bianca’s family investment firm would gain limited authority over a major Moretti Foundation endowment.
Not enough to control it.
Unless other signatures had been forged.
They searched the hidden room.
Behind a loose panel, Grace found a duplicate contract.
The pages looked legitimate.
The signature section did not.
Someone had inserted language granting an emergency transfer right over seventy million dollars in foundation assets if Matteo became incapacitated or legally unavailable within thirty days of the marriage.
Bianca’s family firm would receive temporary control.
Matteo read the clause twice.
“This was not in the agreement my attorneys approved.”
Grace looked at him.
“Would Bianca know?”
“She should.”
They found one more item in the room.
A disposable phone.
There were only three saved messages.
The first was from Marcus.
KEEP HIM CALM UNTIL SATURDAY.
The second was an unknown number.
THE DOGS ARE THE PROBLEM.
The third had been sent that morning.
IF THE MAID STAYS, CHANGE THE PLAN.
Grace stared at the screen.
For the first time since she entered the Moretti gates, fear reached her cleanly.
Not fear of the dogs.
Not fear of the house.
Fear of being noticed by the wrong people.
Matteo saw it.
“You leave tonight.”
Grace looked up.
“No.”
“That was not a request.”
“Then it is a bad order.”
“Grace.”
“Dolores is hurt. Marcus is hiding somewhere on the property. Your wedding papers are forged, and someone thinks I am a problem. Leaving alone down that mountain road is safer how?”
He had no answer.
She folded her arms.
“I stay until this is finished.”
Matteo’s expression softened in a way she had not seen before.
“Why?”
Grace looked at Titan and Nero.
“Because someone used them as weapons and called them monsters.”
May you like
Then she looked at him.
“And because Luca tried to tell you the truth. Somebody should finish listening.”
