Chapter 4 - The Underground Room Beneath the Duca Estate
The next morning, nobody mentioned the rain.
Nobody mentioned the impossible conversation from the night before.
Nobody mentioned the fact that a three-year-old girl had uncovered something the Duca family had spent decades forgetting.
That was how powerful families survived.
They did not deny secrets.
They simply waited until everyone was ready to face them.
The Duca estate woke beneath a gray winter sky.
The servants moved quietly through the halls.
The usual rhythm of the mansion had changed.
People who had worked there for years avoided looking at each other.
Because everyone knew something had happened.
Something unusual.
Something dangerous.
I noticed it the moment I walked downstairs with Emma.
Usually, the servants treated her kindly.
They smiled.
They offered her small pieces of fruit from the kitchen.
They asked about her drawings.
That morning, they watched her differently.
Not with fear.
With curiosity.
Because everyone had heard the story.
The little girl who understood the book.
The little girl who found the secret.
Emma, of course, did not understand any of it.
She was too busy trying to convince her teddy bear that breakfast was important.
“Bear doesn’t like eggs,” she whispered.
I looked down at her.
“Bear doesn’t eat eggs.”
“He should try.”
“Why?”
She looked serious.
“Because Grandpa said you don’t know if you like something until you learn about it.”
I smiled.
My father had said many things.
Most people forgot them.
Emma remembered everything.
That was what made yesterday so frightening.
Not that she knew the symbols.
But that she carried pieces of a person everyone else had overlooked.
Thomas Carter had never been powerful.
He never owned companies.
He never sat in rooms where decisions affected hundreds of lives.
He was just a teacher.
A man who painted.
A man who repaired broken toys.
A man who believed curiosity mattered more than status.
And somehow...
His knowledge had reached the oldest secret of the Duca family.
When I entered the main hallway, I saw Lorenzo waiting.
He stood near the staircase.
Not behind his father’s chair.
Not surrounded by advisors.
Just standing there.
Waiting.
His expression was unreadable.
But I noticed something different.
The exhaustion was still there.
The pressure was still there.
But the cold distance had disappeared.
At least slightly.
“Good morning,” I said.
He nodded.
“Good morning.”
His eyes moved to Emma.
“Are you ready?”
Emma hugged her teddy bear.
“For what?”
Lorenzo almost smiled.
“The room.”
She looked at me.
Then back at him.
“The secret room?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment.
“Is it scary?”
Nobody expected the question.
Lorenzo looked surprised.
Then he answered honestly.
“I don’t know.”
Emma accepted that answer.
“Okay.”
That was it.
No fear.
No hesitation.
Just okay.
I wondered if Lorenzo had ever met someone who responded to uncertainty that way.
Most people around him probably pretended to know everything.
Emma simply accepted that nobody had all the answers.
The search began at nine in the morning.
Only five people were allowed inside the library.
Lorenzo.
Sebastian.
Alberto.
Isabella.
And me with Emma.
Marco was there too.
Of course he was.
He had refused to stay away.
“I want to see this fantasy become a disaster,” he said.
Nobody responded.
The codex sat on the table.
Open.
Waiting.
Sebastian stood beside it.
For the first time in my life, I saw an old man who looked afraid of a book.
“Your father searched this house many times,” Sebastian said.
Lorenzo looked at him.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he find it?”
The old butler looked toward the floor.
“Because he was looking for a room.”
A pause.
“He should have been looking for the reason it was hidden.”
Lorenzo studied him.
“You knew where to look.”
Sebastian did not answer immediately.
That silence told everyone enough.
“You knew,” Lorenzo repeated.
“I suspected.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
Sebastian lowered his eyes.
“It is worse.”
The room became quiet.
Sebastian walked toward the eastern wall of the library.
The wall was covered with old portraits.
Generations of Duca family members.
Men who built the empire.
Women who protected it.
Children who inherited it.
Sebastian stopped in front of one painting.
An old portrait of Lorenzo’s grandfather.
He reached behind the frame.
Nothing happened.
Marco smiled.
“Excellent. We found a painting.”
Sebastian ignored him.
He touched the wooden frame again.
Then he looked at Emma.
“What did your grandfather say about stars?”
Emma walked closer.
“Stars remember.”
Sebastian nodded.
“Good.”
He pointed at the painting.
“Where are the stars?”
Everyone looked.
There were no stars.
Only the dark background behind the painted figure.
Alberto stepped closer.
“Wait.”
He examined the painting.
Then the frame.
Then the wall.
His eyes widened.
“The background.”
Sebastian nodded.
“Exactly.”
The painting was not decoration.
It was a map.
Hidden in the pattern behind the portrait were tiny marks.
So small nobody would notice unless they knew they existed.
Three dots.
A curved line.
A small star.
Emma stared at them.
“The bird looked down.”
Lorenzo looked at the floor.
Beneath the portrait was an old wooden panel.
Almost invisible.
A part of the library floor.
Sebastian moved the carpet aside.
A small metal ring appeared.
Nobody spoke.
For sixty years...
It had been there.
Hidden beneath their feet.
Marco’s expression changed.
For once, he had nothing sarcastic to say.
Lorenzo grabbed the ring.
He hesitated.
Only for a second.
Then he pulled.
The wooden panel opened.
A cold breath of air rose from beneath the mansion.
The smell was ancient.
Stone.
Dust.
Time.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
Isabella stepped back.
“My father knew about this?”
Sebastian answered quietly.
“Yes.”
“Then why hide it?”
The old butler looked into the darkness below.
“Because someone tried to destroy what was inside.”
Lorenzo turned sharply.
“What?”
Sebastian looked at him.
“Your father found the entrance twenty years ago.”
The room froze.
“He opened it once.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“And?”
Sebastian swallowed.
“And the next morning, he ordered me to seal it again.”
“Why?”
The old man looked down the staircase.
“Because he realized the person he trusted most was the person he should have feared.”
Nobody moved.
The words echoed.
Someone close.
Someone inside.
The betrayal was not new.
It had been waiting.
Lorenzo took the flashlight from Alberto.
“I’m going down.”
Sebastian stepped forward.
“Lorenzo.”
But Lorenzo continued.
“I spent my entire life believing my father trusted the wrong people because he was too stubborn to admit mistakes.”
He looked into the darkness.
“Now I find out he was protecting me.”
A pause.
“I need to know why.”
Emma held my hand.
Then she looked at the staircase.
“The bird is scared.”
Everyone turned.
Lorenzo lowered himself slightly.
“What?”
Emma pointed downward.
“The bird is scared because it saw something bad.”
A strange silence followed.
Then Lorenzo asked:
“What bad thing?”
Emma looked at the dark stairs.
And for the first time since she discovered the codex...
She looked uncertain.
“I don’t know.”
That answer frightened me more than anything else.
Because Emma had always known.
But now...
She was looking at something even she could not understand.
Lorenzo stepped onto the first stair.
Then the second.
The others followed.
One by one.
Down into the hidden world beneath the Duca estate.
The walls became older with every step.
The sounds of the mansion disappeared.
The powerful family above them was replaced by silence.
At the bottom of the staircase was a stone corridor.
And at the end of that corridor...
A single door.
No handle.
No lock.
Only one symbol carved into the center.
A backward-looking bird.
Lorenzo stopped.
Emma stepped forward.
She stared at the mark.
Then whispered:
“The bird wasn’t watching who betrayed the family.”
Everyone waited.
“What was it watching?”
Emma looked up.
May you like
Her voice became almost impossible to hear.
“Who the family betrayed first.”
