Chapter 15 - The CisternCelia knew the tunnels.
That was the first thing Dalia understood.
The passage behind the library was narrow, stone-walled, and cold enough to make her teeth ache. Emergency lights did not reach here. Celia moved with a small flashlight in one hand and the knife in the other, breathing hard but steady.
Dalia stumbled behind her.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere this ends.”
“You mean where I end.”
Celia did not answer.
Above them, the house thundered with violence. Muffled shots. Running feet. Bobby barking like an animal possessed by fury.
Dalia thought of Rowan.
She thought of Milo.
She thought of Serena standing in front of her son as if trying, at last, to become the wall she had failed to be.
Then Celia yanked her forward.
“You have no idea what your child will become,” Celia said.
“She will become a person.”
“She will become a claim. Men will put papers in her crib and guns in her nursery.”
“Only if people like you keep deciding blood matters more than love.”
Celia stopped so suddenly Dalia nearly collided with her.
The old woman turned.
In the flashlight glow, her face looked haunted.
“You think I was born old?” she asked. “You think I came into this world knowing how to bury softness? I loved someone once. A man beneath my station, according to this family. My father had him beaten so badly he never walked straight again. Then he married me to a man who kept mistresses in three states and called it tradition.”
Dalia’s anger faltered.
Celia stepped closer. “I learned. Women survive in families like ours by controlling damage before men name it destiny.”
“You became the damage.”
Celia slapped her.
The blow snapped Dalia’s face sideways.
Pain flared across her cheek.
For one second, the tunnel went silent.
Then Dalia looked back at her.
“No,” Dalia whispered. “You don’t get to call murder survival.”
Celia’s eyes filled with tears she seemed to despise.
A noise sounded behind them.
Celia stiffened.
Voices.
Rowan’s men.
For one moment, hope surged through Dalia.
Then Celia shoved open an iron door hidden beneath roots and rain.
The storm hit them like a wall.
They emerged in the woods.
Dalia could barely see. Rain blinded her. Mud sucked at her shoes. Branches whipped her face. Celia forced her along a narrow path lit only by lightning.
Ahead, the land dropped.
Stone appeared.
Round.
Old.
The cistern.
Dalia’s blood turned to ice.
“No.”
Celia’s grip tightened. “Move.”
Dalia fought then.
Not with elegance.
With terror.
She twisted, shoved, clawed at Celia’s wrist. The knife cut her sleeve. Celia cursed. Dalia slipped in the mud, caught herself against a stone edge, and screamed Rowan’s name into the storm.
Thunder swallowed it.
Two figures appeared from the trees.
Rossi men.
Celia snapped, “Help me!”
They did.
One grabbed Dalia’s arms. The other bound her wrists behind her with plastic restraints so tight she cried out. Celia stood back, shaking, rain running down her face.
Dalia looked at her.
“Please,” she said. “Not my baby.”
Celia’s mouth trembled.
For one second, Dalia thought humanity might win.
Then Celia closed her eyes.
“I am sorry.”
The men lifted Dalia.
She kicked.
She screamed.
She felt air beneath her.
Then she fell.
The impact knocked breath from her body. Pain exploded through her hip, shoulder, knees. Cold water splashed around her. She tried to push herself up but her bound hands twisted uselessly behind her.
Above, the circle of sky flashed white with lightning.
Celia stood at the edge, small and dark against the storm.
Dalia screamed, “Celia!”
The old woman did not answer.
One of the men rolled a rusted grate partly over the opening. Not fully. Enough to make escape impossible. Enough to let water pour in.
Then they left.
Dalia forced herself upright, gasping.
Water rushed around her ankles.
Then her calves.
Then her knees.
Her wrists burned. Her mouth tasted of blood and rain.
The storm roared above her.
This was where the story had begun.
No one at the mansion knew she was missing.
The men had chosen the storm because it would erase every sound she made.
They had thought of everything.
Everything except the dog.
At first, Dalia heard nothing but water.
Then, above the thunder, faint and distant, came a bark.
Deep.
Furious.
Alive.
“Bobby!” she screamed.
Water climbed higher.
Her body shook so hard her teeth struck together.
“Bobby!”
Another bark.
Closer.
Then another sound.
A man shouting her name.
Not Daniel.
Not fear.
Rowan.
“Dalia!”
She sobbed so violently she almost slipped beneath the rising water.
“I’m here!”
The beam of a flashlight cut across the opening.
Bobby’s massive head appeared first, wrinkled and rain-soaked, barking down into the pit as if ordering the earth to release her.
Then Rowan’s face appeared beside him.
For the first time, Dalia saw panic on Rowan Fiero’s face.
Real panic.
“Hold on,” he shouted.
Dalia laughed and cried at once.
“I’m tied!”
“I see.”
The grate screeched as men above pulled at it.
Water reached her waist.
Her legs were going numb.
Rowan shouted orders she could not understand. A rope dropped. Then a harness. Nico’s voice. Massimo’s curse. Bobby’s barking.
Dalia tried to stand straighter.
The water shoved against her.
“I can’t,” she cried.
Rowan leaned over the edge farther than anyone should.
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m scared.”
His voice changed.
Not softer.
Closer.
“So am I.”
That held her.
The confession was so unexpected, so human, that Dalia found one more breath.
Nico came down the rope first, water crashing around him. He cut her restraints. Pain screamed through her wrists as blood returned. He secured the harness around her.
“Baby?” Dalia gasped.
“You’re both getting out,” Nico said.
Above, Rowan shouted, “Pull!”
The rope tightened.
Dalia rose through rain, stone, thunder, and terror.
Hands grabbed her.
Rowan’s hands.
He pulled her over the edge and into his arms before anyone else could reach her.
She collapsed against him, sobbing.
Bobby pressed his wet head against her stomach and whined.
Dalia clutched his face.
“I told you not to get me fired,” she whispered.
Rowan wrapped his coat around her shoulders.
His voice was low and deadly.
“No one is firing you.”
May you like
He looked toward the woods where Celia had vanished.
“They are burying the wrong people tonight.”
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