Chapter 2The Vineyard’s Secret

The private jet cut through clouds the color of old bone. Selene sat across from Caelan, the torn photo burning in her coat pocket, the key cold against her thigh. Below them, the Tuscan landscape rolled out in patchwork greens and golds, ancient and indifferent.

“You said Marcus helped your family,” she said. “When. How.”

Caelan didn’t look up from the folder he was reading. “Twelve years ago. My father’s company collapsed. Your father bought our debt and let us keep our home.”

“That’s not the story I heard.”

“What did you hear?”

“That Marcus Voss destroyed the Thornes. Took everything. Left your father with nothing.”

He closed the folder. “Both things are true.”

The silence stretched until it frayed. Selene wanted to press harder, but something in his voice—a flatness, a careful emptiness—made her stop. People who talked about their wounds this way had learned to hide the shape of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before the press conference?” she asked.

“Would you have believed me?”

She wouldn’t have. She’d have called Julian, and Julian would have spun it into poison.

“I need to text Mira,” she said, pulling out her phone.

“Don’t tell her where we’re going.”

“She’s my sister.”

“She’s also the head of the tech division that Julian has been quietly draining for six months.”

Selene’s fingers paused over the screen. “You’re saying Mira knew?”

“I’m saying I don’t know who knew what. But until we find that ledger, everyone is a suspect.”

She typed anyway. *Going dark for a day. Don’t worry. Will explain.*

Mira replied instantly: *Call me. I’m scared.*

Selene turned off her phone.

---

The vineyard rose from the hills like a forgotten painting—terracotta roofs, iron gates, cypress trees standing sentinel. But the beauty felt wrong now, like a mask that had slipped.

The manager met them at the entrance. Enzo. Late fifties, hands stained with earth, eyes sharp with suspicion.

“Signor Fox said no one was to access the archives without his approval,” he said, blocking the door.

Caelan stepped forward, calm. “I understand. But the board requires an inventory audit before the shareholder meeting. We have authorization from the chair.”

He held up his phone, displaying a document Selene had never seen before—a formal letterhead, a seal, a series of codes that looked official. Enzo squinted at it, and Selene held her breath.

“This is irregular,” Enzo said, but his certainty wavered.

“Call the board secretary if you need to verify,” Caelan said smoothly. “Though she’s in a meeting with the auditors until five. You’ll have to wait until then.”

Enzo’s jaw tightened. He didn’t want to call; he wanted to be rid of them. “One hour. No more. And I’ll be watching the cameras.”

He unlocked the door and walked away.

Selene exhaled. “That document was real?”

“I have friends in legal. And a talent for persuasion.”

“You bribed someone.”

“I made a donation to the secretary’s favorite charity. Same thing.”

They moved through the main building—barrels stacked like sleeping giants, the smell of oak and aging wine thick in the air. The archives were in the basement, a damp room lined with metal shelves and filing cabinets that hadn’t been organized in decades.

“This will take days,” Selene said, scanning the chaos.

“We don’t have days.”

They started searching. Selene pulled open drawers filled with purchase orders, tax records, employee files. Nothing about smuggling. Nothing about artifacts.

“What exactly are we looking for?” she asked.

“A ledger. Black leather. Marcus’s handwriting. He kept a separate set of books for anything he didn’t want the board to see.”

“And you know this how?”

Caelan paused, a folder half-open in his hands. “Because I helped him hide them.”

Selene stopped. “You worked for my father?”

“Not directly. But he trusted me with certain things. Small things at first. Then larger.”

“Why would he trust you? You were the son of a man he ruined.”

Caelan met her eyes. “Because I had nothing to gain from betraying him. The same reason you trust me now.”

She wanted to argue, but the logic was sound. And she’d already made her choice.

They searched in silence until Selene’s fingers brushed against something behind a row of tax files—a small book, wedged between the shelf and the wall. Not black leather. Red.

She pulled it out. The pages were blank.

“It’s a decoy,” she said, disappointed.

“Or a key.” Caelan took it, running his thumb along the spine. He pressed the cover’s edge, and a seam split open, revealing a hidden pocket. Inside was a single slip of paper with a string of numbers and letters.

“What is it?”

“A code.” He studied it. “But not a standard one. It looks like a cipher based on dates.”

Selene’s mind clicked. “My father’s note. He mentioned a cipher.”

She pulled out the letter Marcus had left her—the one Caelan had delivered. The handwriting was shaky, rushed, but the last line was clear:

*Trust the one who has nothing to gain.*

*The key is in the dates.*

She looked at the code again. Four groups of numbers. Two letters. A pattern.

“It’s a book cipher,” she said. “The numbers refer to page, line, and word from a specific text. But which text?”

Caelan glanced at the shelves. “What books does your father keep here?”

She scanned the titles—wine guides, history books, a few novels. Then she saw it, spine faded, tucked between two ledgers: *The Divine Comedy*, Dante’s journey through hell.

She pulled it out, opened to the first page. “Page one, line ten, word three.”

She counted. The word was ‘Karas.’

Selene’s blood went cold.

“Dimitri Karas,” she whispered. “Julian’s contact.”

Caelan took the book, flipping to the next reference. “Page fourteen, line twenty-two, word seven.”

‘Vault.’

“He’s telling us where to go next. The vault isn’t just in Scotland. There’s something here too.”

They found the third reference. ‘Cellar.’

And the fourth. ‘False.’

“The cellar has a false wall,” Selene said. “This way.”

They moved through the basement, past barrels, past stacks of crates, until they reached a section that looked solid—stone wall, no seams. But Selene pressed against it, and a section gave way, swinging inward on hidden hinges.

The room beyond was small, windowless, lit by a single bulb. And on the walls: photographs. Dozens of them. Artifacts in glass cases, statues, jewelry, ancient coins. Each one was tagged with a date, a location, and a price.

Julian’s smuggling operation, laid out like a gallery.

Selene’s eyes moved from image to image until they stopped on one. A photograph of Marcus, younger, standing next to a woman with sharp features and a familiar smile.

“That’s my mother,” Caelan said quietly.

The photo was torn—the same jagged edge as the one in Selene’s pocket. She pulled hers out, fitted the pieces together. The image showed Marcus, Caelan’s mother, and a third person whose face had been cut away.

“Your father was there too,” Selene said. “My father kept the other half.”

“To remember. Or to hide.”

Before they could examine further, a low hum filled the room. The silent alarm.

“We have to go,” Caelan said.

Footsteps echoed above them. Heavy. Fast.

They grabbed what they could—the photo, the book, the coded note—and slipped out the hidden door, pressing it closed. The cellar was dark, but Caelan’s hand found hers, pulling her toward a narrow corridor she hadn’t noticed before.

“Service tunnel,” he said. “Leads to the outer wall.”

They ran. The footsteps grew louder, closer, a voice shouting in Italian. The tunnel curved, sloped upward, and ended at a rusted grate. Caelan forced it open, and they spilled into the vineyard, the sun low and golden, the air thick with dust and safety.

Selene leaned against a cypress tree, catching her breath. “They know we were here.”

“They knew before we arrived.”

Caelan’s phone buzzed. He looked at the screen, and his face went still.

He turned it toward her.

The message was from an unknown number:

*You’re in over your heads. Leave now, or the next artifact will be your bodies.*

Selene stared at the words, the torn photo still clutched in her hand. The third face in the image—the one cut away—stared back at her from memory.

It had been Julian’s face, she realized. Standing beside her father, beside Caelan’s mother, a decade before any of this began.

And she knew, with a certainty that settled in her bones like stone, that the conspiracy went deeper than a single ledger.

That Julian hadn’t acted alone.

That someone else had been pulling the strings from the very beginning.