The Safe Behind the Wolf
Chapter 07 - The Safe Behind the Wolf
Damen kept the safe hidden behind first editions and dust, which told me two things.
One, he trusted books more than people.
Two, whatever lay inside had frightened him for a very long time.
He entered a code. The safe beeped red.
He tried again.
Red.
His jaw tightened.
Paul, who had returned to the room after securing the corridor, said quietly, “Sofia’s birthday?”
Damen looked at him.
Paul raised his hands. “Just thinking.”
Damen entered six numbers.
The lock turned green.
Inside was not money. Not jewels. Not weapons.
Only a leather notebook, a small packet wrapped in silk, and a stack of old photographs bound by a black ribbon.
Damen touched none of them at first.
Men like him had probably opened safes filled with enough cash to buy towns. Yet this little space full of paper seemed to undo him.
I shifted Ellie on my lap.
“She told us to look under the wolf,” I said.
“I know.”
“Who?”
He looked at the sleeping child.
Then at me.
“My wife kept diaries. After she died, I locked away the last one because I could not bear to read it.”
“That was nineteen years ago.”
“Yes.”
The word was a confession.
He removed the notebook.
The leather had cracked at the edges. A pressed white rose fell from between the pages and landed at his feet.
Damen picked it up as though it might cut him.
He opened the diary.
At first he read silently.
Then the color left his face.
“What?” Paul asked.
Damen did not answer. He passed the diary to me.
I hesitated. Reading a dead woman’s private words felt wrong.
But Damen nodded once.
The entry was written in a graceful hand.
If anything happens to me, Samuel Hayes is not responsible. He is trying to help me. The danger is inside the family. I think Matteo knows more than he admits. Celeste is not who she says she is. She came first as a girl with a false name, asking about my father-in-law’s accounts. She has returned older, richer, and more careful.
My mouth went dry.
Damen’s voice was rough. “Celeste was in this house before I knew her.”
“Why would your wife write my father wasn’t responsible?”
“Because someone made it look like he was.”
He turned the page.
There, folded between diary sheets, was a photograph of my father.
Younger. Thinner. Wearing work clothes. Standing in the greenhouse beside Sofia Romano.
She was alive.
Smiling.
In her hand was the blue stone necklace.
Damen looked at the picture as if grief had become physical and stepped into the room.
“She knew him,” I whispered.
“She trusted him.”
On the back of the photograph, Sofia had written:
Samuel says the ledger is hidden where the dog sleeps.
Atlas lifted his head.
“The dog?” Paul said.
“Sofia had a dog before Atlas,” Damen replied. “A shepherd named Nero. He died six months before she did.”
“Where did Nero sleep?”
Damen looked toward the door.
“The south greenhouse.”
The burned greenhouse.
The place where Sofia died.
The place my father should have burned.
I felt the story underneath ours begin to move.
“We need to go there,” I said.
Damen shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever tried to poison me and take Ellie wants us running blind.”
“She’s already in danger.”
“Yes.” His voice sharpened. “Which is why she stays behind locked doors with guards until I know more.”
“My daughter is not evidence to be locked in a box.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
Paul took one step back, perhaps wisely.
Damen’s voice went quiet. “I did not mean it that way.”
“I know what you meant. I also know what powerful men usually mean after they say protection.”
Something passed across his face.
Shame, maybe. Or recognition.
“I will not cage you,” he said.
“Good.”
“But I will not let them take your child.”
“Then stop deciding things around me and start deciding them with me.”
The fire cracked in the silence.
A dangerous man looked at a tired maid and did something I do not think he often did.
He listened.
Damen nodded.
“Tomorrow at first light,” he said. “We go together.”
Paul’s phone buzzed.
He checked it, then cursed softly.
“What?” Damen asked.
“Matteo is gone.”
The room went dead.
“He escaped the east room?” Damen asked.
“No,” Paul said. “He was never in it.”
He turned the phone toward us.
May you like
On the screen was security footage of Matteo walking through the garage twenty minutes earlier with Celeste at his side.
And in Celeste’s hand was Ellie’s stuffed bunny.
