Chapter 7 - The Servants’ Passage
William followed the passage with Daniel and two officers behind him.
The mansion had been built in 1911. Old blueprints showed narrow service corridors connecting bedrooms to the kitchen wing, but William had never used them.
Charlotte apparently had.
Or someone else had used them to move her.
“Daddy!”
The cry came from below.
William ran toward it.
He found Charlotte at the bottom of a narrow staircase, pressed against the wall while a masked man tried to drag her through a basement door.
William hit him from the side.
The man crashed into a storage rack. Daniel pulled Charlotte away.
William drove the attacker to the floor.
The man reached for a knife.
William caught his wrist and slammed it down until the blade skittered away.
“Who sent you?” William shouted.
The attacker laughed through broken breath. “You think this started with the woman you’re marrying?”
William punched the floor beside his head. “Answer me.”
“You still don’t know what your father built.”
William froze.
His father, Arthur Sterling, had founded the charity forty years earlier.
Arthur had been dead for seven years.
The man twisted suddenly, kicked William away, and ran toward the boiler room.
Daniel chased him.
A second later, a metal door slammed.
When they forced it open, the room was empty.
Only an old freight tunnel remained, leading under the lawn toward the former carriage house.
Charlotte clung to William.
“Daddy, scary man said Mommy was bad.”
William lifted her. “Mommy wasn’t bad.”
“He said she took something.”
“What?”
Charlotte touched the pocket of her dirty dress.
From inside, she pulled a tiny brass key.
“Mommy gave me this.”
Emma, who had just reached the basement, stared at it.
“I know that key.”
William looked at her.
Emma swallowed.
May you like
“It opens the old records room at the foundation office.”
Then she added quietly, “The room Marcus told everyone was empty.”
