Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I pushed the thought away. He’s the enemy! And if he wouldn’t share stuff with me, I’d just have to get the evidence some other way.
I went back to the stairs and carried on down to the first floor. I found a massive ballroom at the back of the house, which must be where Konstantin held his famed parties. There were several lounges, the smallest of which seemed to be permanently set up for poker, a gym and a sauna: I’d heard about how Russians liked their saunas.
I passed through a set of double doors and the whole mood of the house seemed to change. The furnishings were less lavish and more practical, and where the rest of the house felt quiet and echoey, this part was a hive of activity. I realized I’d strayed into the part that I wasn’t supposed to see: the staff area. I saw women wheeling laundry carts around and others carrying trays of food. There was a huge pantry and an even bigger kitchen, where a man in a chef’s hat seemed to be briefing the cooks for the evening meal. When he saw me, he jumped to his feet. “Miss Rogan! Can I get you something to eat?”
He was smiling and seemed friendly enough. But he’d gone pale and his smile was too wide, too forced. Does Konstantin keep them all living in fear?
I shook my head. “No. Sorry. I’ll leave you in peace.”
I passed through a hallway lined with closely-spaced doors. A few were ajar and I could see people lounging on beds, reading or listening to music, like a college dorm. This is where the staff live. God, what must all this cost?
At that moment, a pretty blonde in a maid’s uniform who couldn’t have been more than twenty rounded a corner and saw me. Her face went snow white. “Miss Rogan! Did you ring? I’m sorry! I didn’t hear! What do you need?” She literally ran the rest of the distance to where I stood. “I’m sorry!” she said again.
She was shaking. She was actually shaking.
And I realized I knew her face. She was Christina’s personal maid, the one I’d seen mistreated on the airport security footage. And suddenly I knew why the chef had seemed weird.
The staff weren’t scared of Konstantin. They were scared of me.
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “I didn’t ring. I don’t need anything.”
She blinked and searched my face, confused. Then what are you doing here?
And I realized that what I was doing was wrong. I was meant to be Christina and if Christina kept these people in mortal fear then I had to, as well. I had to snap at her, berate her for nothing at all, and make her cry. I steeled myself—
The maid looked at me, hopeful but scared. A puppy waiting to be kicked.
I couldn’t do it. Not even if it meant arousing suspicion. “I came down here to thank you,” I said. “I don’t do that enough.”
The maid looked doubtful, as if it might be a trick. “You—You’re very welcome, Miss.”
I realized I had no idea what her name was. “Um. Look, I’m really sorry but you’re going to have to remind me....”
“Victoria, Miss.” Weirdly, asking her name didn’t seem to surprise her. Knowing Christina, she’d just called her girl or bitch or something.
“Victoria.” I smiled at her. And she gave me a nervous smile back.
I retraced my steps back to the main part of the mansion and found a staircase that led down. The mansion extended deep underground. The first basement held the guard’s quarters and the armory. Deeper down, I found an underground garage. And below that….
The first warning was the stairs. They changed from smooth concrete flights to a rough stone spiral and the walls went from brick to rock. The electric lights ended and were replaced with candles that barely lit the way. I slowly descended, now deep below the earth. “What the hell is this?” I muttered, just to break the eerie silence. But there was no reply from my earpiece. “Calahan?”
Nothing. I realized that I was so deep, the rock was probably blocking the radio signal. I nearly turned back...but if I wanted to find out Konstantin’s secrets, this seemed like the perfect place to look. I carried on down.
When I finally reached the bottom of the stairs, I was in a room walled in solid rock. There was a door of dark oak, banded with iron, and I hauled it a little way open. God, it must be a foot thick!
As soon as the gap was wide enough, I slipped through.
Oh no.
18
Hailey
I STOOD JUST BEYOND the doorway, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.
The room was roughly rectangular and about the size of one of the big bedrooms upstairs. But the walls weren’t quite straight: they curved in and out like a frozen sea. The room had been carved out of the rock, the walls chiseled smooth with millions of individual hammer blows. Then the walls had been painstakingly polished so that all those tiny flat surfaces shone like the facets of a diamond, the dark rock reflecting the light from a fireplace until it looked like the walls themselves were on fire. The floor was tiled with white marble, the firelight turning it creamy and warm.