Chapter 4 - floor twenty-one
The Bellavere Grand officially had twenty floors.
Every hotel brochure, architectural plan, and emergency diagram ended at level twenty.
But when Isabella was a child, her grandfather had once told her the building had a hidden floor.
She had assumed it was another of his stories.
According to him, the original Bellavere had been designed for diplomats and royal families who wanted privacy from newspapers, governments, and sometimes their own relatives. The hidden floor contained private apartments, meeting rooms, and an archive accessible only through a separate elevator.
After the fire, the floor had been sealed.
No one had mentioned it again.
Until Adrian’s note.
Isabella left the ballroom and walked toward the private elevator. Lorenzo followed.
Marcus remained under guard, but his laughter carried into the corridor.
“You should take her upstairs, Lorenzo. She deserves to see what her family hid.”
The elevator sensor still showed a red light.
Isabella placed her palm against the metal panel.
Nothing happened.
Lorenzo removed an old brass key from his pocket.
She stared at it.
“You knew the elevator was here.”
“I knew it had existed.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Lorenzo inserted the key into a narrow slot beneath the panel.
The doors opened.
Inside, there were no numbered buttons. Only a small screen displaying a single symbol: a silver bird inside a circle.
Isabella had seen it before.
The same bird appeared on the Halcyon trust records.
She and Lorenzo entered. Two security officers followed.
The doors closed.
The elevator began to rise.
“Who was believed dead?” Isabella asked.
Lorenzo kept his eyes on the doors.
“There were several deaths connected to the fire.”
“Marcus said someone has a stronger claim than I do.”
“He wanted to frighten you.”
“Did it work on you?”
Lorenzo glanced at her.
“Yes.”
The admission was so unusual that Isabella forgot her anger for a moment.
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened into darkness.
Dust covered the marble floor beyond. White sheets hung over furniture, and the air smelled faintly of smoke despite the years that had passed.
One security officer found the electrical panel.
Lights flickered on across a long corridor.
The hidden floor had not been abandoned.
Fresh footprints marked the dust.
A modern security camera had been installed above the elevator. New cables ran along the old walls. At the far end of the corridor, light escaped beneath a closed door.
Someone had been using the floor recently.
Lorenzo motioned for the officers to move ahead.
The first room contained empty shelves and several portable scanners. The second held stacks of copied hotel records. The third had been converted into a temporary office.
On the desk sat photographs of Isabella.
Some had been taken at public events. Others showed her leaving medical appointments, visiting her mother’s grave, and meeting her father for lunch.
There were photographs of Marcus as well.
Several showed him speaking with Adrian.
One showed Vanessa handing Marcus an envelope outside a bank.
Another showed the unknown accountant entering the hotel at night.
Isabella picked up the newest photograph.
It had been taken that evening.
She stood outside the hotel in the rain, only minutes before Lorenzo arrived.
Someone had been watching from above.
The computer on the desk was still warm.
A folder lay beside it.
Lorenzo opened the folder and stopped breathing for a moment.
Inside was a birth certificate.
The child’s name had been partially removed, but the parents remained legible.
Mother: Elena Moretti.
Father: Samuel Bell.
Isabella recognized her aunt Elena’s name. Lorenzo’s younger sister had died in the Bellavere fire when she was twenty-nine.
According to the birth date, Elena had given birth to a daughter one year before the fire.
Isabella looked at her father.
“You told me Aunt Elena never had children.”
“That is what I was told.”
“By whom?”
“My father.”
“Grandfather knew?”
“I do not know.”
Beneath the birth certificate lay a photograph of Elena holding a baby.
On the back, someone had written:
The first Bellavere daughter.
A sound came from the corridor.
The officers turned.
A woman in a dark hotel uniform ran toward the emergency stairwell.
“Stop,” one officer called.
She pushed through the stairwell door.
Isabella followed before Lorenzo could stop her.
The woman disappeared down one flight, but Isabella saw her face as she looked back.
May you like
It was the accountant who had sent the photographs.
And around her neck hung a silver bird pendant identical to the Halcyon symbol.
