Page 105 of Salvatore

“No.” I clear my throat and squeeze around the cabinet to stand at the center of the passage entrance. Light shines behind me. There’s nothing but darkness ahead. “It’s not Catarina.”

There’s a pause.

“Then who might you be, child?” The voice softens to a more welcoming tone.

I step cautiously into the shadows, trying to spot the stranger through my limited vision, the narrow chamber swallowing the light from upstairs. “I’m a guest.” I chance another slow step and another, my pulse thundering.

“What is your name?” she asks, her position in the pitch-black obscurity not seeming to change from what I guesstimate to be a few yards ahead.

“Can I be impolite and ask for yours first?” My steps shrink, each forward momentum growing smaller.

Knowledge might not be power in this instance.

The passage walls disappear and I move to stand before a sea of inky black—the opening of what I assume is another room. A tiny red light glows from my left, the shred of illumination casting the slightest sinister hue across the void.

“You are fearful?” The woman’s voice carries from straight ahead. Still no movement. No sense of an impending attack.

A breath of a laugh escapes me. “It isn’t often that I go snooping through the houses of powerful men.”

She makes a slight hum of understanding.

“Not that I was snooping,” I clarify. “I just thought this was Catarina’s room because I’ve seen her carrying a food tray in here. But tonight I found out she has her own cottage somewhere else on the property and I…” The beat of silence that follows wraps its cold hands around me and digs in clawed nails.

“I don’t think you were meant to pay attention to her coming down here, my child,” the woman confirms.

There’s a rustle of noise that puts me on edge, then a tiny light flicks on, the illumination no brighter than a child’s night lamp.

I take in the room with quickly escalating panic—the metal bars of a prison cell, the older woman trapped inside.

“My name is Adena Costa.” She meets my eyes, her face lined with wrinkles, her long grey hair loose around her shoulders, her body covered in a cheap sweatsuit. “I am the sister to the powerful man you fear.”

Oh, holy mother of fuck.

I take a retreating step, the instinct to run finally kicking in.

“Please don’t go.” She flicks off the light, plunging the room back into darkness. “There are cameras but I’m led to believe they are rarely monitored anymore.”

Anymore?As in, she’s been here so long they’ve stopped bothering to watch?

This isn’t good. Thisreallyisn’t good.

I try to make out the bars in the darkness, that slight red glow giving me the faintest outline. “How long have you been down here?”

“Too long to continue keeping track.”

Is that days, weeks, months?

“Each night bleeds into the next,” she continues. “But if I were to guess, I’d say I’d be approaching my two-year anniversary of imprisonment.”

I attempt to measure my exhale, yet shock has it leaving me in a rapid heave.

“I assume you’re here under more hospitable circumstances,” she muses.

I open my mouth to answer but words fail me.

I need to leave. This is next-level insider information. The type that will get me buried in a shallow grave.

I take another retreating step.

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