THE TRUNK

By morning, Sienna’s bravado had dulled.

She’d spent most of the night sprawled on a sagging mattress in one of the upstairs rooms, her knife on the nightstand and her pepper spray under the pillow. Sleep, when it came, was fractured and restless — dreams of footsteps on the stairs, whispers just outside her door, shadows slipping between the olive trees.

But daylight mocked all that. Sunlight spilled across the cracked floorboards, the groaning house seemed less like a haunted ruin and more like what it was: a neglected farmhouse. The fears that had gripped her in the dark looked flimsy now. Embarrassing, even.

Almost.

On the kitchen table, the bottle of olive oil still waited. Untouched. The note, Leave, sat beside it like a slap.

Sienna shoved it into her pocket before she could second-guess herself. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.

The cellar was cooler in the morning, but no less unsettling. She descended the steps with her phone light again, the stone walls swallowing the sound of her footsteps. The trunk waited in the far corner, squat and stubborn.

She crouched, running her hand over the rusted lock.

Her grandfather’s initials, faint but deliberate: M. R.

“Okay, Nonno,” she murmured under her breath. “What were you keeping down here?”

The knife was useless. But the cellar was old, cluttered — and after a little searching, she spotted a crowbar leaning in the shadows near the stairs. She almost laughed. It was too perfectly placed, like someone had left it there for this exact purpose.

The lock resisted. She braced her weight, grunted, shoved harder. Metal shrieked in protest before finally snapping, sending her stumbling back against the wall.

The lid creaked as she pried it open.

Inside were papers. Dozens of them, stacked in neat bundles: ledgers, receipts, folded letters. All handwritten, all in Italian. Even without translating every word, the columns of names and numbers screamed bookkeeping. Records. Debts.

Her stomach tightened as she dug deeper. Beneath the papers sat bundles of cash — some crisp euros, others faded Italian lira, bound together with rubber bands gone brittle with age. Money hoarded, hidden.

And at the bottom, wrapped in oilcloth, was something heavier.

Sienna hesitated before pulling it free. The cloth peeled back to reveal a pistol, black steel glinting in the beam of her phone light. Well-oiled. Maintained. Waiting.

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Her grandfather had never been violent, at least not in the fragments she remembered — the man who cooked her pasta drowning in oil, who let her sip watered-down wine at ten years old. But this? A trunk of cash, ledgers that looked suspiciously like organized debt records, and a gun?

This wasn’t inheritance. This was legacy.

And maybe a warning.

She wrapped the pistol back up quickly, hands shaking, and shoved the papers into some semblance of order. Questions crowded her brain faster than she could answer them. Why had Luca told her to check the cellar? Did he already know what was here? Did he want her to find it… or want her scared enough to leave it untouched?

Her thoughts shattered at the sound of an engine outside.

She froze, straining to listen.

Not the heavy purr of Luca’s SUV, but something smaller. A compact car. Tires crunching gravel as it rolled to a stop.

Her pulse raced. She slammed the trunk shut, the sound too loud in the confined cellar, and killed her phone light.

Up the stairs, two at a time, heart hammering. She pressed herself against the kitchen wall and peered through the slats of the shutter.

A red hatchback sat in the dirt driveway, dust coating its sides.

The driver’s door opened.

A woman climbed out. Late fifties, maybe, with dark hair streaked with silver, pinned up beneath a scarf. She wore a faded floral dress and sturdy sandals, and her posture carried the kind of confidence that belonged to someone who’d lived in the same village all her life. Sharp eyes scanned the house — not casually, not with curiosity, but like she was searching. Like she expected someone to be inside.

Sienna’s throat tightened.

Not Luca. Not a stranger in a suit. But not exactly a friendly neighbor with a welcome basket either.

The woman started toward the door, steps steady, gaze fixed on the house.

Sienna’s hand tightened around the knife in her pocket. She didn’t move. Not yet.

The knock, when it came, was loud. Firm. A sound that belonged to someone used to being answered.

“Signorina Russo?” the woman called, her accent thick, her voice strong. “I know you are here.”

Sienna’s stomach flipped. Her name. Not American granddaughter, not the girl who inherited. Her name.

The woman knocked again, sharper this time. “We must speak.”

Sienna hesitated. Every instinct screamed to stay silent, to wait until the woman left, to avoid another round of cryptic warnings. But something else pulled at her — curiosity, yes, but also something deeper. The sense that this woman knew her grandfather. Knew the truth behind the trunk

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