THE CELLAR

The front door groaned like it resented being disturbed.

Sienna shoved it open with her shoulder, dragging her suitcase across the threshold and into the dim interior. Dust floated in the beams of late-afternoon light slanting through gaps in the shutters. The air smelled faintly of old stone, wood rot, and the ghost of garlic that must have seeped into the walls decades ago.

“Home sweet home,” she muttered.

The entryway was sparse: a battered table with one leg shorter than the others, a chair missing its back, and walls lined with framed photographs so faded she could barely make out the faces. Her grandfather’s house felt less abandoned than paused, like he’d stepped out for a cigarette and never returned.

She left the suitcase by the door and wandered in, her fingers brushing against the frames. Family dinners. Harvests. A black-and-white portrait of her grandfather in his twenties, serious-eyed, standing in front of the same house. She tried to reconcile this man — strong, rooted — with the old man she remembered visiting in New York when she was little. The one who’d cooked her pasta drowning in olive oil and called her piccolina.

And now he’d left her this.

Sienna exhaled and headed toward the kitchen, already bracing herself for whatever horrors an untouched rural Italian kitchen might contain.

The horror did not disappoint.

Rusting appliances. Counters stacked with chipped ceramic bowls. A refrigerator older than she was, humming faintly like it might explode if provoked. She opened it out of morbid curiosity and immediately slammed it shut.

“Okay. Definitely not eating here until I bleach everything.”

She grabbed a bottle of water from her bag and leaned against the counter, replaying the encounter outside.

Luca Moretti.

Sharp suit, sharper jawline, and the attitude of someone used to people listening when he spoke. The way he’d said this land doesn’t belong to you still scraped under her skin.

And check the cellar.

Sienna rubbed her temple. She hadn’t seen a cellar door on her quick walk-through outside. Which meant it was probably inside. Which also meant that if she had a single ounce of self-preservation, she would wait until daylight before exploring creepy underground rooms in a half-ruined farmhouse.

But she wasn’t exactly famous for her patience.

She found the door at the back of the kitchen. Narrow, wooden, with a latch that stuck before giving way. The smell that drifted up when she cracked it open was cool and earthy, tinged with mildew.

Grabbing her phone for a flashlight, she started down the uneven stone steps.

The cellar was larger than she expected, low-ceilinged and lined with shelves. Most were filled with dusty bottles — wine? Oil? Some unlabeled, some marked in her grandfather’s handwriting. Cobwebs laced the corners.

She moved deeper, her light catching on something at the far wall.

A trunk. Heavy. Iron-bound.

Of course.

Sienna crouched, brushing dirt from the lid. The lock was old, rusted, but still intact. She tugged at it uselessly.

“Figures,” she muttered. “Mysterious warnings always come with inconvenient props.”

Her light flickered over something scratched into the wood of the trunk. Letters. Faint, but legible.

M. R.

Her stomach tightened. Russo. But who was M?

Before she could lean closer, a noise creaked above her. The floorboards.

Someone in the house.

Sienna froze, breath caught, phone light trembling against the stone walls.

.........