The Chapel Beneath the City
Chapter 05 - The Chapel Beneath the City
Saint Agnes stood on a narrow street where Chicago seemed to forget its own wealth. Snow had begun to fall by the time Roman’s black cars stopped outside the old brick building, not heavily, just enough to soften the gutters and gather in the shoulders of stone saints above the door.
The chapel had been deconsecrated years ago. Megan knew that from a newspaper clipping her mother had kept in a shoebox. Now it belonged to one of Lucia DeLuca’s foundations, though the front windows were dark and the brass plaque beside the entrance had not been polished in months.
Roman unlocked the door himself.
No one spoke as they entered. Their footsteps sounded wrong inside the empty nave. Bianca’s satin gown whispered against cracked tile. Elias moved slowly, as if afraid the air would remember him.
Megan followed the smell first: old wood, damp stone, candle wax, and, beneath it all, paper.
Vault Three was not in the main cellar. Elias led them through a side door behind what had once been the sacristy, down a narrow staircase that turned twice before ending at a steel door hidden behind wine racks.
Roman held up the brass key.
Bianca said, “This is insane.”
Her voice echoed.
No one answered.
The key turned with a reluctant click.
Inside, Vault Three was smaller than Megan expected. One table. Two metal cabinets. Shelves of archival boxes labeled in Lucia DeLuca’s careful script. On the far wall stood six crates of wine, each sealed, each bearing the crest of Rinaldi Imports.
Elias looked sick.
“Those should not be here,” he said.
Roman crossed to the crates. “Why?”
“Because your mother refused Rinaldi wine after Samuel was accused. She told me never to let it cross her table.”
Bianca laughed once, too high. “Old women say many things.”
Roman pried open the nearest crate.
Inside were bottles of Bordeaux, but not tonight’s estate. Their labels were older, stained at the edges, and beautiful in the way forged beauty often is: too careful, too symmetrical, too eager to be believed.
Megan reached for one, then stopped and looked at Roman.
He nodded.
She lifted the bottle and turned it toward the light. Her fingers knew before her eyes did.
“The glass is wrong,” she said. “Too clean at the punt. This bottle is pretending to be older than it is.”
Elias took it from her gently. “Samuel said the same thing.”
Megan swallowed.
Roman opened one of the archival boxes.
There were letters inside, bundled with black ribbon.
On top lay a photograph of Lucia DeLuca with Samuel Cole, Elias Mercer, and a younger Carlo Rinaldi. They stood in front of Saint Agnes, smiling at a charity auction banner.
Megan had never seen her father look so unguarded.
For a moment she forgot Bianca, Roman, the cold, the danger. She saw only Samuel Cole alive in the hand of a dead woman.
Roman noticed.
He lowered his voice. “Is that him?”
Megan nodded.
Bianca stepped toward the door. One of Roman’s men shifted to block her.
“I need air,” she said.
“You’ll breathe here,” Roman replied.
He unfolded the first letter.
Megan watched his expression change as he read. Not surprise. Not exactly. More like a man discovering that the floor beneath a childhood memory had been hollow.
“What does it say?” Elias asked.
Roman read aloud.
“Lucia, if anything happens to me, the Rinaldi lots are not just counterfeit. They are being used to move money through Saint Agnes. Carlo knows. I believe Bianca may know as well, though she was only a girl when I first saw her in the cellar.”
Bianca whispered, “No.”
Megan turned to her.
Roman read the signature.
“Samuel Cole.”
The vault seemed to close around them.
Bianca shook her head slowly. “That proves nothing. A dead man can accuse anyone.”
Megan looked back at the wine crates. One label had lifted slightly at the corner.
She touched it with her fingernail and peeled.
Beneath the Bordeaux label was another label, older and stained.
Saint Agnes Children’s Residence.
Roman stepped beside her.
Megan whispered, “This was never just wine.”
Behind them, Elias opened the second cabinet and made a sound Megan had never heard from an old man before—a sound like grief had found a new room.
Inside the cabinet was a ledger.
May you like
And on the first page, beside Samuel Cole’s name, someone had written one word in red ink.
Scapegoat.
