Chapter 3 - The Room Missing From the Blueprint
Lucian found Emma at 2:22 a.m.
Standing barefoot in the old chapel.
The chapel had not been used in years.
No one had told her where it was.
Yet Emma stood before the altar wearing her white nightgown, eyes open and completely empty.
Her right hand was raised.
Her fingers pressed against one carved wooden angel.
“Emma.”
No response.
Lucian approached carefully.
“Emma.”
Her lips moved.
“Fourteen.”
He stopped.
“What?”
“Fourteen sleeps.”
Then:
“Daniel said I can go home after fourteen sleeps.”
Lucian’s chest tightened.
She was speaking like a child.
Not twenty-seven-year-old Emma.
He touched her shoulder lightly.
She turned.
Then screamed.
Not awake.
A raw, terrified scream.
She struck him hard enough to split his lip.
The guards raised weapons.
Lucian roared:
“LOWER THEM!”
Emma backed against the altar.
“No pantry.”
Her breathing became frantic.
“No pantry. No pantry. Please.”
Lucian approached again.
“No one is putting you anywhere.”
She stared through him.
“Daniel?”
“No.”
Her face twisted.
Then she collapsed.
Lucian caught her.
When Emma woke two hours later, a doctor sat beside her bed.
Lucian stood near the window.
Her first words were:
“I did it again.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Chapel.”
“I don’t know where the chapel is.”
“I know.”
The doctor introduced herself as Dr. Helen Ward, a neurologist who owed the Moretti family enough favors not to ask why armed men stood outside.
Emma’s bloodwork showed no conventional sleep medication.
No alcohol.
No recreational drugs.
But one abnormality appeared.
Scopolamine traces.
Low.
Not enough to knock her unconscious.
Enough, potentially, to cause confusion, memory disruption and suggestibility.
“How did it get inside me?”
Dr. Ward said:
“Transdermal exposure is possible.”
Emma frowned.
“Through skin?”
“Yes.”
Patches. Creams. Contaminated cosmetics.
Emma thought about everything she used.
Soap.
Hand cream.
Laundry.
Then remembered.
Teresa gave every new maid a small jar of lavender salve for dry hands.
Emma used it nightly.
Lucian was already calling Marco.
The jar tested positive.
But Teresa’s larger kitchen container did not.
Someone had replaced Emma’s personal jar.
They searched her room.
Inside the bedside drawer, they found a tiny speaker.
Battery-powered.
Connected remotely.
Emma stared.
“What would that do?”
Dr. Ward answered.
“Audio cues.”
Lucian understood.
Someone had been speaking to Emma while she slept.
Repeating instructions.
Names.
Memories.
Suitcase.
Daniel.
Pantry.
Fourteen.
Her brain had absorbed them into dreams.
“Can someone actually make a person do things like that?”
Dr. Ward was careful.
“Not like mind control. People cannot generally be ordered to do complex things completely against their nature. But confused, partially sleeping individuals can respond to familiar cues, routines and environmental prompts.”
Emma looked toward Lucian.
“Someone taught me routes.”
“Yes.”
“While I was asleep.”
“Maybe first while awake without your noticing.”
Her job involved walking most of the estate.
Cleaning.
Deliveries.
Linen.
Someone could condition a route by placing objects.
Sounds.
Lights.
Then repeat cues at night.
The hidden camera outage made the rest possible.
“Why me?” Emma asked.
Lucian looked at the suitcase photographs.
Someone had selected her before she arrived.
Not random.
They needed a person with a history of sleepwalking?
Emma shook her head.
“I don’t sleepwalk.”
Dr. Ward asked:
“Never?”
“As a child.”
Lucian looked over.
Emma had not told him.
“After Daniel died,” she continued.
“For about a year. My mother said I wandered into the backyard twice.”
There.
Someone knew her childhood medical history.
Who?
Employment records would not include it.
But insurance records might.
School records.
Pediatric files.
Emma’s mother.
They called her.
Margaret Carter lived in Vermont.
When Emma mentioned sleepwalking, her mother went quiet.
Then said something impossible.
“Emma, I never told the employment office.”
“Told them what?”
“That you used to walk in your sleep.”
“So who knew?”
“Dr. Keller.”
Emma remembered.
Child psychologist after Daniel’s death.
Retired now.
Dr. Keller had treated Emma for nightmares.
Lucian’s security team searched him.
Dead six months.
Before death, Keller’s practice files were purchased by a private behavioral-research company.
Owner:
Meridian Behavioral Consulting.
Meridian had one major client.
Moretti Hospitality Group.
Lucian stared at the screen.
One of his own legitimate companies.
“Who hired them?”
Marco searched.
The contract was twelve years old.
Signed by Lucian’s father.
Victor Moretti.
Lucian’s father had been dead for nine years.
Yet Meridian continued receiving annual payments.
Automatic renewals.
No one had questioned them because the amount was small by Moretti standards.
$180,000 a year.
“What did they do?” Emma asked.
Officially:
Employee stress evaluations.
Executive risk profiling.
Security behavior studies.
Unofficially?
Unknown.
Then the estate architect arrived with original blueprints.
Emma studied them with Lucian.
Current mansion:
Thirty-nine bedrooms.
Seven service staircases.
Two underground corridors.
Original plan:
Forty bedrooms.
Eight service staircases.
One room was missing.
Not demolished.
Removed from updated drawings.
A narrow bedroom directly behind Lucian’s current bedroom wall.
No visible door.
Emma stared.
“Anna’s?”
Teresa nodded.
“No. Lucian’s room was Anna’s.”
“Then whose room was behind it?”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“Daniel Moretti.”
Emma stopped breathing.
“Daniel?”
Lucian looked at her.
“My uncle.”
Same name as Emma’s dead brother.
Daniel Moretti had been Anna’s older brother.
The man everyone claimed died in a motorcycle accident one month after Anna disappeared.
Emma felt sick.
The voice implanted in her dreams said Daniel.
Maybe her mind had attached it to her brother.
But the person programming her might have meant a different Daniel entirely.
Lucian ordered the wall opened.
Behind antique paneling, workers found a steel door.
Sealed from the bedroom side.
Marco cut the lock.
The room inside had not been opened in decades.
Dust covered everything.
Bed.
Desk.
Books.
A child’s record player.
And pinned across one wall—
Photographs of Anna Moretti asleep.
Walking.
Standing in hallways.
May you like
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Holding keys.
Exactly like Emma.
