Chapter 6: The Tunnel Beneath the Chapel

Matteo went first with his phone light pointed at the floor.

Mara followed him, her medical bag slung across her uninjured shoulder. I took Balthazar’s loose lead, and Lorenzo came behind us after securing the door as best he could.

The passage rose gradually. Water glistened along one wall, and the air smelled of soil rather than smoke.

That was enough to keep me moving.

Balthazar hesitated at the first low arch. I stopped before the rope tightened.

“Let him look,” I told Lorenzo.

Somewhere behind us, metal slammed against metal.

He turned toward the sound.

“We don’t have much time.”

“Pulling won’t give us more.”

I stood slightly ahead of the horse, angled so he could see the space beyond me. He stretched his neck, tested the air, and lowered his head beneath the arch.

We moved again.

My hip ached where I had fallen, but the pain stayed the same. I counted steps between patches of light and concentrated on keeping my feet beneath me.

Halfway up, Matteo raised a hand.

Everyone stopped.

He listened beside a small ventilation opening. Through it came the distant growl of an engine and two men shouting about the west garden.

Mara leaned against the wall. The bandage on her arm had begun to darken.

I took the water bottle from my apron and offered it.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I didn’t answer.

Helping her did not mean I had forgiven her. She had asked permission before checking my baby. Five months ago, she should have done the same before touching me at all.

Matteo waited until the voices faded, then beckoned us forward.

“The chapel floor should be another thirty yards.”

“Should be?” I asked.

“I haven’t used this tunnel.”

“Neither have I,” Lorenzo said.

I glanced back at him.

“You own a house with escape routes you haven’t checked?”

“I trusted the man responsible for checking them.”

Raul’s face appeared in my mind. His last smile.

I looked away.

We reached a bend where part of the ceiling had crumbled. Matteo stepped over the rubble, then came back to steady Mara.

Lorenzo offered me his hand.

I looked at it before taking it.

He didn’t comment. He helped me over the stones and released me as soon as my feet were secure.

It was a small thing. I noticed it anyway.

At the top of the slope, wooden beams replaced the stone ceiling. Matteo found a bolt beside a low hatch and slid it free.

“Stay back.”

He lifted the hatch an inch, waited, then opened it far enough to look through.

“Clear.”

Beyond it, a short ramp led into a storage recess behind an altar. Mara climbed first. Matteo took the medical bag, then reached back for me.

I emerged into cold, colored light.

The chapel smelled of wax and old wood. Thin sunlight passed through the saints in its windows, laying red and blue shapes across empty pews.

Outside, an alarm sounded without stopping.

I moved aside so Balthazar could follow. Lorenzo guided his shoulder past the last beam. The horse came into the chapel with his head lowered, then lifted it and gave an uneasy snort.

Matteo shut the hatch.

For the first time since the courtyard, nobody was shooting at us.

I sat on the end of a pew.

The baby moved beneath my hand. I waited for another kick, and got one.

Mara watched me.

“Still the same pain?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and adjusted her bandage with her teeth until I stood to help her.

“Sit down,” she said.

“Hold the gauze, then.”

She held it. I wrapped the clean layer over the old one.

At the window, Matteo lifted his phone.

One bar appeared, then vanished.

“We need the south ridge,” he said. “Our people can reach us there.”

Lorenzo checked his ammunition. “The garden between here and the ridge is exposed.”

I joined them at the window, keeping behind the stone frame.

Two men moved between clipped hedges. Beyond them, smoke rose from the mansion’s eastern side. Farther uphill stood the stables, broad doors shut.

I knew those doors. Every morning, I passed them on the way to the laundry building.

“What about the lane behind the paddocks?” I asked.

Matteo looked at me.

“It connects to the lower service road.”

“Through the exercise yard,” I said. “The hedge hides most of it from the house.”

Lorenzo studied the route.

“We’d have to reach the stable yard first.”

“Are the horses still inside?”

“Twenty-six of them,” Matteo answered.

Smoke drifted toward the nearest barn.

“Then somebody needs to open the uphill paddocks. If the fire reaches them, they’ll break through anything they can.”

Lorenzo turned to me.

“You are not going into that barn.”

“I didn’t say I was. I said they need a way out.”

Matteo checked his radio. “The stable staff are sheltering in the tack room. I can tell them.”

He moved away to speak quietly.

Balthazar nudged the back of my coat. I stroked his neck, watching the distant doors.

“I won’t leave him locked somewhere,” I said.

“Neither will I,” Lorenzo answered.

It was the first thing we’d agreed on without a fight.

He looked at the photograph I had tucked inside Mara’s folder.

“Your mother once let three injured horses into my father’s kitchen garden because the stable manager refused to change their bedding.”

I turned toward him.

“What did your father do?”

“Threatened to fire her.”

“Did she leave?”

“She asked whether he wanted the horses brought into his dining room next.”

I almost smiled. Then I remembered that I knew almost nothing else about her.

“Don’t give me only the good stories,” I said.

His expression grew serious.

“When we’re out, I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Including what you did wrong.”

“Including that.”

Matteo returned from the far window.

“They can open the paddocks, but someone’s cut power to the main doors. They’re working on the manual release.”

“Tell them not to send the horses toward the driveway,” I said. “The upper field is fenced. They can get them clear there.”

He relayed it.

Lorenzo looked through the window again. “We’ll cross along the chapel wall, then use the hedge. Matteo goes ahead. Mara stays between us.”

“And I lead Balthazar,” I said.

“Yes.”

He opened his mouth as if to add something, then closed it.

I gathered the papers, zipped them into the medical bag, and gave it back to Mara. Matteo returned my borrowed phone. I slipped it into my apron.

For a moment, the plan felt possible.

Then Balthazar lifted his head.

His ears fixed on the chapel entrance.

Matteo turned. Lorenzo’s gun came up.

The doors opened before either man reached them.

Four gunmen entered, spreading into the aisles. Dritan followed, his cream coat gray with dust.

“I wondered whether that passage still worked,” he said.

Two weapons pointed at Matteo. Another settled on Mara. The fourth man aimed directly at my belly.

Lorenzo stepped in front of me.

“Move that gun.”

Dritan looked past his shoulder and found my eyes.

“Your father has finally told you,” he said. “Good. Now we can stop pretending I came here for a maid.”