The Don's Forbidden Heir

The Secret Room

Sleep did not come easily for Elara.

She lay in the massive bed staring at the canopy above her, listening to the strange noises that came from the house. She could hear people walking around outside and the occasional murmur of voices. Every time her eyes closed, she saw Matteo's face hovering over her. She saw the look of warning in his dark eyes when he said Little sister.

Finally, she gave up.

She slid out of the bed and pulled on the jacket that had been left for her over the thin sleep shirt. She opened the door and peered out into the hallway. The sconces that lined the walls cast shadows across the floor, but there was no one in sight. She tiptoed out into the hall, her bare feet making soft noises against the floorboards. She walked past several doors, all closed, until she came to the east wing of the house, the part that Vincenzo had warned her not to enter.

The door at the end of the hall was locked.

She was about to turn back when her fingers found a small space between the door jamb and the wall. She pushed against it, and a click sounded. The door opened onto a small, windowless room that was lit by a lone lamp. The air smelled of old perfume and paper and something else, something metallic.

It was her mother's room.

There was a small bed against one wall, neatly made, and a vanity, its mirror cracked. A desk took up most of the opposite wall, and against the far wall, standing alone, was a trunk. The trunk looked older than the rest of the furniture in the room.

Elara closed the door behind her and crossed the room to the desk. She opened the drawers and found letters, dozens of them, all in her mother's handwriting. Some were addressed to "V", and some were unsigned. She read a few of them, scanning the pages, letting the words wash over her. Her mother had loved him; she saw that now. Her mother had feared him, and she had hidden her feelings from him, too. She had kept secrets from him, though what they were, Elara could not say.

One letter spoke of a place only they knew. Another hinted at things hidden where the walls remembered.

Elara turned her attention to the trunk. It had a simple lock, and she found the key taped to the bottom of the drawer in the desk, just where her mother might have left it. Inside the trunk were clothes, mostly silk, some of them still fragrant with expensive perfume, and beneath them, a small box wrapped in black velvet.

Pictures.

Pictures of her mother, younger, laughing, naked, her body framed by the room that had just been her prison. Vincenzo's shadow fell across several of them, and in a few, her mother stood alone, her hands splayed across her stomach, her eyes locked onto the camera as if daring anyone to look. There were other pictures, too, of her mother's face, her body, her hands, her mouth, all of them open and willing, showing a side of her mother that Elara had never seen before.

Beneath the pictures, she found a leather-bound journal and a silk scarf the colour of wine. The journal was filled with her mother's writing, flowing words that described nights spent in this very room, nights when her mother had been taken roughly against the wall, when she had crawled on her hands and knees, when she had been told to be quiet while the house slept. Her mother's words described feeling desired, feeling frightened, feeling wanted.

Elara's breath hitched as she read them.

Heat bloomed low in her belly, pooling between her legs, and she found herself gripping the silk scarf in her hands. She had never read anything so wanton, so wicked, in her life. She had never seen her mother as anything other than a beautiful and frightening woman, but these words painted a picture of a woman who knew what she wanted and took it, no matter the cost. Her mother had been so bold in her desires, so open in her willingness to give herself to another woman, and it made Elara's skin prickle with longing.

She traced the words with her fingertips, her pulse hammering between her legs, her heart racing in her chest.

One passage described a night when Vincenzo had brought his son home, a boy of about sixteen, and her mother had watched, hidden in the shadows of this very room, as the young man cleaned blood from his hands. He had Vincenzo's eyes, she wrote, cold and hungry, and one day, he would be much worse.

Elara closed the journal and sat on the edge of the small bed, her legs curled beneath her, the silk scarf still in her hands. The room suddenly felt stuffy, and she was keenly aware of the soft fabric against her skin, the tightness of her n*****s beneath the thin cotton of her sleep shirt, the heat low in her belly that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.

She thought of Matteo in the dining room, the way he had hovered over her, the way he had warned her, the heat that had flared between them when their eyes had met. She thought of the way he had looked at her, the way he had leaned over her chair. Something had changed between them, something that had nothing to do with the threat he had made.

She put the journal and the pictures back in the box and closed the trunk. She left the room the way she had found it, her heart still racing, the scent of her mother's perfume clinging to her skin.

Back in her bed, she lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, her hand resting lightly on her stomach as if she could press the feelings down, bury them deep inside her. It didn't work. The awakening had already begun.