Chapter 33
PENELOPE
Dolly doesn’t look back as she pulls me deeper into the dim hallway, her bare feet whispering against the cold stone. My own steps feel clumsy by comparison, loud, disoriented, panicked. But she holds tight to my wrist, guiding me with a determined urgency that refuses to let me fall behind.
We turn down another corridor, and I follow blindly, never having been in this part of the manor before, but Dolly clearly knows exactly where she’s going. The sconces here are unlit, the air colder, the walls sweating with age. The deeper we move, the more something primal inside me recoils.
“This way,” she whispers, her voice is barely sound, a shape on her mouth more than a noise.
She stops at an unremarkable wooden door. A cleaning cupboard, or it would look like one to anyone else.
“What is this?” I question, peering at the hinges, old and rusty, the metal ring handle worn.
“Not what it looks like.” She glances back, checking the hall behind us. “No one comes down here.”
Dolly pulls the handle, and the door opens with a breath-like creak, revealing not mops or buckets, but a narrow stone passage spiralling downward into even deeper darkness. The air that rises from below is cold enough to sting my throat.
My pulse flutters, and I think of Billy again, my heart recoils at the thought of leaving him, “I… I don’t know if I can-”
“You can.” Dolly’s grip on my wrist tightens, the curve of her long nails sinking beneath my skin. “You have to.” Her dark blue eyes flick to my stomach, softening just for a moment. “Especially now.”
The thought of Milus's hands anywhere near my child makes something hot and violent twist inside me.
Dolly steps onto the first stone stair, tugging me along.
The descent is claustrophobic, the walls close enough that my shoulders nearly graze them, and the air grows colder with each step. The stone beneath my feet is slick, worn smooth by generations of hidden footsteps. My free hand clenches against my chest, trying to steady my breathing.
After what feels like an eternity, the stairs empty into a tunnel so vast I can’t see the end of it.
I gasp, suddenly finding ourselves in this huge wide open mouth of unknown.
It stretches out in both directions, long corridors carved into the bedrock, supported by wooden beams, lit only by faint cracks in the ceiling where house light filters through earth and stone.
Dolly gives a humourless smile, her eyes lifting to mine. “Do you know anything about the history of Raven Ridge Manor?” I’m shaking my head before she even finishes her sentence. “Didn’t think Billy would have bothered, he doesn’t really care about the family feud.”
My mouth opens into a ‘O’ shape, about to ask what that means, but Dolly’s dragging me along again, taking us down the long tunnel.
Damp drips, and our footsteps echo, but other than that and our heavy breathing, it’s silent. So silent I wonder how a place on earth like this even exists, I wonder how deep we are. How close to the earth’s core. To Hell.
“Milus and his twin brother, Stryder, were brought up together at an old water mill out in the country. For decades the Blackwell family men had been ‘fixers’.” She keeps pulling me along, our feet a plodding speed walk.
“Working for the mafia, the mob, any criminal underbelly gang organisation that hired them to ‘clean up’. But, Milus, well, he wanted more. Bigger, better. He didn’t want to work for someone else any longer. Milus thought it beneath him.”
Dolly takes us through another tunnel, narrower, darker, but she doesn’t hesitate, still talking in a hush the whole time.
“The Blackwells live by a code, ‘Blackwells don’t tell lies’. They eat, sleep, breathe it.”
“Live by it?” I question her use of present tense.
She smiles as we exit out of the narrow tunnel and take some rotting wooden steps up.
“Yes, live.” Dolly’s fingers lace through mine, pulling me through another door.
“Anyway, Stryder, the easy-going one of the two, he just went along with whatever Milus wanted, let him lead, did whatever he wanted even if he didn’t approve, like building this place.
Stryder liked the mill, but was happy to move to somewhere bigger, grander, as long as it meant he could continue to be with his brother, continue to live by the Blackwell family code.
They worked well that way for a while, quickly moving up in the underworld, growing their name to mean more than mere cleaners. ”
“But then a woman came into Stryder’s life, Milus didn’t like it, the attention not on him for a change.
He got jealous, tried to seduce her, and when that didn’t work, he killed her in cold blood, made it look like a big crime family in Southbrook had done it so Stryder would agree to go to war with them.
Something Stryder had been vehemently against when Milus had earlier proposed the same thing, wanting to eradicate them and take over their territory.
But Stryder had said no, not understanding why Milus couldn’t just be happy with what they had. ”
My feet stop moving, and Dolly stills, turning back to look at me, tugging at my hand.
“So they went to war?” I ask her, my mind racing with the knowledge there are other Blackwells out there somewhere.
Dolly shakes her head, “No.” Leading me once again by the hand. “Stryder was informed,” she pauses, swallowing, “by a woman who had been witness to his lover’s murder. Milus had tried to keep the woman quiet, but she told Stryder anyway.”
“Why didn’t Milus just kill her as well?” I question, failing to see why he would spare her when he never has anyone else.
Dolly pulls us through another tunnel, releasing my hand to pick up a metal pole lying on the ground, tapping the end of it four times on what looks like a lock box on the wall.
“Because she was carrying Gore,” Dolly tells me quietly, facing away from me towards the end of the corridor.
Bright light erupts at the end of the passageway, Amaranthine’s pale face staring out at us from it. Dolly reaches back for my hand, but instead of pulling me along again, she turns to face me, our lips barely an inch apart, her blue eyes searching mine.
“Milus had broken their family’s one sacred vow, to never lie,” Dolly continues. “So from that day forward, Stryder separated himself from his brother. Leaving behind only one little piece of himself that Milus still hasn’t gotten completely worked out.”
“What’s that?” I ask, confused, my forehead creased.
Dolly smiles, and it is wicked.
“These tunnels.”