CHAPTER FOUR
The tunnel went on forever, its walls breathed damp air that whispered against my skin as if the stones themselves remembered what had been buried here. I followed the faint light that was flickering ahead, the only sign was that I wasn't trapped between nightmares and reality.
When I finally reached the end, the passage opened into a vast underground hall where dust hung in the air like fog, the whole place looked old even more older than the house above it but it was built with care and secrets just then I sighted a long table stretched across the room and on it laid ancient papers, maps, and weapons lined with precision. Then I noticed that someone was already there, could that be?
I saw the man with the scar leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and half of his face hidden in shadow. The fair-haired one stood near a map, studying it under a single hanging bulb. The third one, the one who hadn't spoken to me sat at the table with his eyes unreadable as always, the fourth one leaned by the door
"You shouldn't have run," the leader said quietly.
"I didn't," I replied, though my voice trembled. "I was dragged," He almost smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. "Well dragged or not, you made it here and that means something." Though I wanted to ask what it meant but something inside me already knew or even feared it did but my father's name that was carved on that stone still echoes in my mind.
"Where is he?" I asked finally. The fair-haired man spoke without looking up. "Gone"
"Dead?"
A long silence filled the hall then the one with the scar said, "Not in the way you think." I frowned. "What does that even mean?" Then the man at the table stood up but the motion was still calm and deliberate. "He made a choice that saved you and cost him everything else."
He then walked toward the table and then pulled a folded document from beneath a stack of files. It was old, the edges were even burnt and stained with what looked like blood but that didn't even bother me, it was what was written on it that caught my attention, my name was written across the top in full but isn't the name I'd grown up with.
Serena Dante was written on it but it didn't feel like mine, but the ink seemed to recognize me.
"He built something," the fair-haired man continued. "A network,a resistance and the Black Rose."
The same symbol that I have and was also carved in the tunnel. "He led it," the one with the scar said with a voice low. "Until betrayal tore it apart then they came for him and also for you but he hid you before they could find you." I sank into the nearest chair because the air suddenly became too heavy to breathe.
"So all this…" I pointed to the room, the weapons, the maps and everything that was therein. "is because of him?"
"Yes," the man at the table said. "and because of you too"
"Me?"
He looked at me, this time truly looked as if searching for traces of someone else. "You're not just his daughter but you're the last one who carries his blood."
My stomach turned. "You are making it sound like a curse."
The fair-haired man's eyes flicked toward me. "Sometimes it is." I pressed my hands together, trying to steady them. "Why now? Why are you all telling me now? Why not before?" "Because before," said the scarred one, "you were not safe."
The word safe didn't mean anything anymore, not after the gunfire, the tunnels and not after realizing that everything i'd known since the beginning of my existence was a lie.
The man at the table spoke again, quieter now. "Your father died protecting something important, something people are still willing to kill for."
"What is it?" He hesitated but a word finally dropped from his mouth "You."
The word struck harder than I expected, I stared at him, at all of them, searching for any sign that this was some elaborate lie or some twisted game but there was none. It was only the sound of the old pipes groaning above us and the faint flicker of the single bulb overhead us that made a sound. I felt suddenly small, I looked down then suddenly I saw shadows coming close. The fair-haired man stepped closer, his voice gentler than the others. "You have her eyes, you know that's why people always said you looked just like her."
"Her?"
He paused. "Yes, your mother." The air was still. "but I never knew her."
"Yes," he said softly. "But she knew you, she was part of this too, long before you were born she and your father built everything together and when she died, he tried to keep you away from it all but history doesn't forget its blood."
The chandelier above the table trembled as the wind howled through the tunnel, carrying the sound of rain. I looked down at my hands as it was trembling, pale and for the first time, I understood why every stranger who knew my father stared too long at me and spoke too carefully because I was a living echo.
"What happens now?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
The man in the suit, their leader, looked at me steadily. "Now we find what your father died protecting." "And if I refuse?"
"Then the people who killed him will find you first." He turned away and the silence that followed was sharp enough to cut through bone.
Somewhere above, a bell tolled faintly and distant just like a clock counting down.