Chapter 2 - The Door She Opened Asleep
Lucian did not allow Emma to touch the suitcase.
That annoyed her.
“I’m the one who apparently walked through your security system unconscious.”
“Exactly.”
“That doesn’t make me fragile.”
“It makes you evidence.”
“That is worse.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
The hidden room behind the west corridor was barely eight feet wide. No furniture. No windows. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling.
The suitcase rested beneath it.
Lucian called Marco Bianchi, his security chief.
Marco was fifty, broad, permanently skeptical and one of the few men who addressed Lucian without adding “sir.”
He examined the suitcase.
“No wires.”
“Open it,” Lucian said.
Marco glared.
“You open it.”
Emma looked between them.
“This is reassuring.”
Marco eventually used gloves.
Inside the suitcase were clothes.
Women’s clothes.
Not Emma’s.
A red wool coat.
Two blouses.
Jeans.
A pair of black boots.
And photographs.
Dozens.
Emma felt her stomach tighten.
Every photograph showed the Moretti estate.
Not from outside.
From inside.
Kitchen.
Garden.
Library.
Hallways.
Security doors.
Lucian’s office.
His bedroom.
One photograph had been taken from beside the bed.
Lucian stared at it.
“Someone has been inside my room.”
Marco swore.
Emma picked up another image using gloves.
A maid pushing a laundry cart.
She recognized Teresa.
Another showed Marco speaking to guards.
Another—
Emma.
She stopped.
The photograph had been taken three weeks earlier.
Before she started working at the estate.
She stood outside a grocery store holding two paper bags.
“My God.”
Lucian moved beside her.
“You were being watched before you applied.”
“I didn’t apply.”
“What?”
“Teresa called me.”
Lucian turned.
Emma explained.
She had worked at a small hotel outside Boston.
Three months earlier, the hotel closed after a fire damaged half the building.
Emma needed work.
A woman at the employment office gave her Teresa’s number.
Teresa interviewed her by phone.
Two days later, Emma moved into Moretti staff housing.
Lucian’s eyes hardened.
“Who gave you Teresa’s number?”
“I don’t know.”
“That changes.”
Marco searched the suitcase.
At the bottom, beneath a false panel, he found a notebook.
Blank.
Mostly.
One page contained a list of dates and times.
2:17.
2:11.
1:56.
2:18.
Each repeated beside Emma’s initials.
E.C.
“What are those?” she asked.
Lucian answered quietly.
“Your sleepwalking episodes?”
“I’ve had one.”
“Are you sure?”
Emma opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
She had experienced strange mornings since arriving.
Mud on her slippers.
A scratch on her ankle.
One night, her bedroom window had been open even though she remembered locking it.
She blamed stress.
The notebook listed eleven dates.
She recognized three mornings after which she had felt unusually exhausted.
“I’ve been walking in my sleep for weeks.”
“Possibly.”
Marco looked at the photographs.
“Or somebody is moving her.”
Emma’s skin crawled.
“No.”
Lucian looked toward him.
“What do you mean?”
“Sedatives. Hypnotics. Suggestion.”
“I don’t take anything.”
Marco’s gaze moved toward her.
“Tea?”
Emma thought.
Every night Teresa left chamomile tea in the staff kitchen.
Everyone drank it.
But Emma had a special cup.
Teresa said chamomile helped with anxiety.
Lucian’s expression became ice.
“Test everything she eats.”
“Lucian—”
“Everything.”
Emma crossed her arms.
“You just violated your new commitment not to decide things for me.”
He looked at her.
“I’m having food tested.”
“My food.”
“Yes.”
“So ask.”
His jaw flexed.
Marco looked deeply entertained.
Lucian finally said:
“May I have your food tested for substances that could be causing unconscious behavior?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“You sound angry about good manners.”
“I am adapting.”
They returned upstairs.
Teresa was waiting in the kitchen.
Seventy-three.
Tiny.
White hair pinned tightly at the back of her head.
She had worked for the Morettis since Lucian was a child.
When Lucian placed the brass token on the kitchen table, color left her face.
Emma saw it.
So did everyone else.
“Where did you get that?” Teresa whispered.
Lucian leaned against the table.
“You know it.”
Teresa sat down.
“That is from the old servant lockers.”
“What servant lockers?”
“The original estate had fourteen underground storage rooms.”
Lucian frowned.
“I know of eight.”
“Your grandfather sealed the others.”
“Why?”
Teresa looked toward Emma.
“After the girl disappeared.”
Silence.
“What girl?” Emma asked.
Teresa’s hands trembled.
“Anna Moretti.”
Lucian went still.
His aunt.
His father’s youngest sister.
Anna disappeared from the estate forty-two years earlier at age seventeen.
The Moretti family story said she ran away with a musician.
Her body was never found.
“The police believed she left,” Emma said.
Teresa looked at Lucian.
“Your grandfather paid them to believe it.”
Lucian’s expression became cold.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t.”
Teresa’s eyes filled.
“I only know Anna was sleepwalking before she vanished.”
Emma’s stomach dropped.
Lucian straightened.
“What?”
“Almost every night.”
Teresa continued.
“She would wake in strange rooms. Find things in her hands. Keys. Buttons. Jewelry.”
Emma looked at the button still tucked inside her robe pocket.
Lucian did too.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was fifteen.”
Teresa’s voice cracked.
“Your grandfather said Anna was sick.”
“Was she?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Emma noticed something.
“Did Anna ever talk about a suitcase?”
Teresa’s face changed.
“Yes.”
The room went silent.
“She kept saying somebody was putting her suitcase outside.”
Emma gripped the table.
Exactly what she had said asleep.
Same words.
Forty-two years later.
That could not be coincidence.
“Where was Anna’s bedroom?” Emma asked.
Teresa pointed upward.
Lucian already knew.
His face went white.
Emma followed his gaze.
“Where?”
He answered quietly.
“My room.”
That night, Emma refused to sleep alone.
Not because she wanted Lucian’s bed.
Because someone had been inside her mind using the same pattern connected to a girl who disappeared decades earlier.
Lucian gave her the guest room opposite his.
Marco positioned two guards outside.
Emma drank no tea.
A doctor drew blood.
At 1:48 a.m., she fell asleep.
At 2:11, the hallway camera showed Emma sitting upright in bed.
At 2:12, she opened her door.
At 2:13, she walked past both guards.
Neither stopped her.
Because neither saw her.
The security footage suddenly froze for exactly three minutes.
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When the camera returned—
Emma was gone.
