LEAVE

The sound came again. A slow, deliberate creak of weight pressing against old wood.

Sienna’s pulse slammed in her ears. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if it was footsteps above her or the frantic beat inside her own chest. Every horror movie she’d ever half-watched came rushing back, each one whispering the same advice: don’t go into the basement. And yet, here she was.

She pressed her palm to the cold stone wall, grounding herself, forcing her breathing to stay quiet.

The footsteps crossed the kitchen — steady, unhurried. Whoever it was wasn’t trying to sneak. They wanted her to know they were there.

The latch rattled.

Her throat tightened. If the door swung open, she’d be caught instantly.

But then it didn’t. Instead, a faint thump echoed through the wood, like something had been set down on the counter. The footsteps shifted again, this time heading toward the front of the house.

The hinges groaned. The front door opening.

Then silence.

Sienna stayed frozen in the dark, counting. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety. Finally, when her lungs ached from shallow breathing, she flicked her phone light back on.

The cellar walls looked unchanged, the trunk still waiting in its shadowed corner. But the sense of being watched clung to her like cobwebs. She crept up the stairs, forcing herself not to wince at the creaks beneath her feet, and eased the cellar door open.

The kitchen was empty.

Almost.

On the table by the window sat a glass bottle of olive oil. Dark green. Heavy. Unlabeled.

Her stomach twisted. That hadn’t been there before.

With careful fingers, she lifted it. The glass was cool, the cork sealed. It looked ordinary, but the fact that someone had placed it here — silently, deliberately — made it anything but.

Beneath it, half-pinned by the weight of the bottle, was a scrap of folded paper.

She unfolded it with shaking hands.

One word, scrawled in sharp handwriting:

Leave.

Sienna stood there, staring at the note until the letters blurred. A wave of irritation rose to smother her fear. Leave? After a transatlantic flight, after jet lag and dust and cryptic men in black suits? Absolutely not.

She dropped the paper onto the counter and reached for her suitcase in the entryway. From inside, she dug out her Swiss Army knife and the tiny canister of pepper spray she carried everywhere in New York. Hardly heavy artillery, but enough to make her feel less exposed.

Her eyes flicked back to the cellar door.

The trunk was still down there. Locked. Waiting.

Maybe that was what Luca meant. Maybe someone else wanted it, badly enough to sneak into the house while she was standing twenty feet below.

The thought made her skin prickle, but it also lit something stubborn inside her.

If there was something hidden in this house, something worth breaking in for, she needed to find it before anyone else did.

She tightened her grip on the knife and stared at the note again.

“Leave,” she muttered under her breath. “Yeah, not happening.”

But as the last of the daylight faded outside, leaving the house wrapped in dusk, a cold thought threaded its way into her resolve.

If they wanted her gone this badly on the first night… what would they do if she stayed?

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