Chapter 3 - The House With No Windows
Dante did not take Arabella to a hospital.
Hospitals created records. Records created leaks. By the time an ambulance reached the corner, every police scanner in Manhattan would carry her description.
Instead, he took her beneath the salon through a private service elevator.
The elevator descended three floors below street level.
Arabella stood in the farthest corner, wrapped in Dante’s coat. Her freshly cut hair framed her bruised face. She watched the glowing floor numbers as if each one carried her deeper into a grave.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Somewhere secure.”
“That’s what prisons call themselves.”
Dante looked at her. “You can leave whenever you want.”
“Your men locked the salon.”
“Because someone fired a rifle through the window.”
“You brought danger.”
“You were already in danger.”
The doors opened into an underground garage.
A black SUV waited with its engine running. Two armored vehicles stood beside it.
Arabella stopped.
“No.”
Dante followed her gaze.
“What?”
“The car.”
“It’s armored.”
“They used black cars.”
Dante dismissed the driver and opened the rear door himself.
“You choose where you sit. You keep the door unlocked until we move. No one touches you.”
She did not move.
“We can stay in this garage,” he said. “But the shooter knows the salon. That means he may know this exit.”
After a long pause, Arabella climbed inside.
Dante sat across from her instead of beside her.
The convoy left through a tunnel connected to an adjacent building. It emerged six blocks away and drove north through the rain.
Arabella kept her eyes on the passing streets.
She flinched at every police car.
“Are you wanted?” Dante asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That wasn’t a joke.”
“I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“What is the first thing you remember?”
“A ceiling.”
“What kind?”
“White. Cracked. There was a camera in the corner.”
“How old were you?”
“I didn’t know my age.”
“What happened there?”
She pressed her forehead against the cool window.
“A woman called me Patient Seven.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“She gave me pills. If I refused, men held my mouth open.”
“What did the pills do?”
“They made time disappear.”
“How did you escape?”
Arabella closed her eyes.
“A fire alarm. A door was left open. I ran through a kitchen, then into snow.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe six years. Maybe nine.”
Dante studied her scar.
Someone had kept Arabella alive after the yacht exploded. Someone had erased her identity, damaged her memory, and hidden her in a facility.
And when she escaped, they had allowed the world to assume she was simply another homeless woman.
The convoy entered a private garage beneath a townhouse on the Upper East Side.
Arabella expected marble and chandeliers.
Instead, Dante’s safe house looked almost empty.
Gray walls. Simple furniture. No artwork. No photographs.
The windows were reinforced, but they were large.
She walked toward one and touched the glass.
“You said it wasn’t a prison,” Dante said. “Prisons don’t have views.”
“This one might.”
A woman in her sixties entered carrying folded clothes.
Arabella backed away.
“This is Rosa,” Dante said. “She raised me.”
Rosa gave him a disapproving look. “I kept you alive. Raising would suggest you learned manners.”
For the first time since the salon, Arabella almost smiled.
Rosa placed the clothes on a chair.
“They are new,” she said gently. “You may wash alone. The bathroom door locks from the inside. No cameras.”
Arabella stared at her.
“How do I know?”
Rosa handed her a screwdriver.
“You can remove the smoke detector and check.”
Dante lifted an eyebrow.
Rosa ignored him.
Arabella took the screwdriver.
An hour later, she emerged wearing black sweatpants and a soft gray sweater. Her skin was clean. Without dirt covering her features, the resemblance to Arabella Vale became impossible to deny.
Dante had placed several old photographs across the dining table.
Arabella stopped when she saw them.
One showed her as a child riding a horse.
Another showed her at seventeen beside a sailboat.
The final photograph showed her with her father and uncle.
Richard Vale stood behind them.
He was younger then, but his thin smile had not changed.
Arabella touched his face.
Her hand began shaking.
“I know him.”
“What do you remember?”
“A voice behind a door.”
“What did he say?”
She swallowed.
“He said the trust would never belong to him while I was alive.”
Dante leaned forward.
“What trust?”
“I don’t know.”
He opened a file his lawyer had sent.
After Charles Vale died, his estate had passed temporarily to Richard. But Charles’s private trust contained a condition: if Arabella returned before her thirty-second birthday, control of Vale Maritime and its associated holdings would transfer to her immediately.
Arabella would turn thirty-one in three weeks.
Dante pushed the document toward her.
“You have one year to reclaim everything.”
She did not look at the papers.
“I don’t want everything.”
“Richard may believe you do.”
“I want to be left alone.”
“That stopped being possible when your mark was exposed.”
Her eyes flashed. “Because of you.”
“Yes.”
The direct admission disarmed her anger.
Dante continued, “I brought you into that salon. I allowed too many people to see you. That was my mistake.”
“Men like you don’t admit mistakes.”
“Men like me bury them.”
Rosa entered carrying soup.
Arabella tensed.
“You watched her make it,” Dante said. “No pills.”
Rosa set the bowl down. “And no poison. Though I considered it for him.”
Arabella slowly sat.
She ate one spoonful, then another.
Halfway through the bowl, Dante’s security chief entered.
“Boss, we found the sniper’s vehicle.”
“Where?”
“Abandoned in Harlem. Burned.”
“Body?”
“No.”
“Camera footage?”
“Wiped remotely.”
Dante glanced at Arabella.
“Anything else?”
The security chief hesitated.
“There was a symbol painted beneath the car.”
He showed Dante a photograph.
A black lion.
Arabella dropped her spoon.
The sound rang through the room.
Then every light in the townhouse went out.
Dante drew his weapon.
Emergency lights flashed red.
A mechanical lock engaged somewhere downstairs.
His security chief touched his earpiece.
“We’ve lost the cameras.”
Dante moved toward Arabella.
“Stay behind me.”
A voice came through the townhouse speakers.
A calm male voice.
“Patient Seven,” it said, “return to your room.”
Arabella went white.
May you like
The voice continued.
“You were never supposed to wake up.”
