Chapter 4 - Beneath the Stone Lion
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Dominic led them onto the moonlit terrace.
Maisie stayed between him and Grace.
Vivienne followed because Dominic had instructed security not to let her leave the estate.
The two stone lions had stood there since Dominic was a boy.
One faced east.
One faced the water.
He remembered Elena joking about them.
“Your family even makes statues look angry.”
He hadn’t thought about that night in years.
Dominic knelt beside the western lion.
Nothing.
He checked the stone base.
Then Maisie spoke.
“Maybe it’s not under it.”
Dominic looked at her.
“What?”
“The locket says when the lions face the sea.”
“They already face the sea.”
Maisie shook her head.
“One doesn’t.”
Dominic looked again.
She was right.
The eastern lion had been turned several degrees inward.
He remembered renovations after a hurricane seven years earlier.
The statues had been removed.
Then replaced.
Possibly incorrectly.
Dominic called two staff members.
They carefully rotated the eastern statue.
A narrow brass plate appeared beneath the base.
Grace covered her mouth.
Dominic removed the plate.
Inside the hollow cavity was nothing.
Vivienne laughed.
“There. Your great mystery.”
Dominic ignored her.
Maisie crouched.
“What’s that?”
A small piece of faded red ribbon protruded from a crack.
Dominic pulled.
A narrow key came free.
Grace’s eyes widened.
“The red box.”
“You recognize it?”
“Elena tied red ribbon around the key.”
Dominic stood.
“So the box isn’t here.”
“No.”
Maisie suddenly pointed toward the estate.
“Mom—Grace.”
Grace flinched slightly at the correction.
Maisie continued.
“You have a red box.”
Grace stared.
“In the laundry room.”
“No. The old one.”
Grace slowly went pale.
Then she remembered.
When she first came to work at the Castellano estate, she brought one suitcase and an old trunk.
Inside that trunk were several things Elena left behind.
Grace had never been able to open one small red metal box.
She assumed Elena lost the key.
Vivienne’s face changed.
Dominic saw it.
“Where is the trunk?”
Grace answered.
“Servants’ storage.”
Vivienne suddenly spoke.
“There was a flood down there last year.”
Grace looked at her.
“No, there wasn’t.”
Vivienne hesitated.
Dominic’s voice became cold.
“You’ve been in that storage room.”
“I manage this house.”
“No.”
He looked toward his head of security.
“You manage nothing tonight.”
They moved downstairs.
Grace unlocked the storage room.
Her trunk sat against the far wall.
Open.
Empty.
Grace stared.
“No.”
Dominic checked the floor.
Fresh scrape marks.
Someone had moved something heavy recently.
Then he saw a piece of red paint beneath a shelving unit.
The red box had been there.
But it had already been taken.
Dominic turned slowly toward Vivienne.
She smiled.
“You have no proof I touched it.”
Maisie suddenly looked toward a small ceiling camera.
“Maybe that does.”
Vivienne’s smile disappeared.
May you like
👉 The red box was gone, but Maisie had just noticed the one witness Vivienne had forgotten to silence.
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