Elena shifted the glass panes of her window, watching as Raphael and most of his goons jumped into different cars, and drove down the cobbled driveway out of the estate. She made sure they completely left the estate before she moved away from the window, ready to kick-start her plans.
The wedding was never an option, she wasn't going to be bound to a crazy and dangerous man like Raphael. She had to find incriminating evidence against Raphael that she could give to Barry Moore, to help lock him up for good, and free him of her.
She left her room. Standing before the door, she made sure none of Raphael's men were in the corridor. Most of them had left the house with Raphael, but there would still be some in the house, enough to stop her from escaping the property, but not enough to keep tabs of her movements around the house. She hurried towards the private elevator that led exclusively to Raphael's quarters, thumped the button and stepped into the elevator cage. It took her to his quarters directly, announcing her arrival with a loud ding.
She refused to be mesmerized by the luxurious ambience of the room and immediately began her search. She attacked the drawers first, sifting through the piles of expensive materials and documents in them, careful not to disrupt the original positions of things and their arrangements. She made her search as methodical as was possible. She didn't want to give Raphael any reason to think anyone had ever been snooping through his things in his room. Not finding anything useful in the drawers, she moved to check the king-size bed, and then the whole of the room. Still not finding anything, she moved into the large closet, momentarily stunned by the luxuries housed there. Every clothing material and accessory had its own particular section, and were arranged neatly and meticulously in categorized order on customized shelves. It didn't look like she would find much in there, so she turned away, disappointed at the failure of finding something incriminating. Then she paused, her brows knitted as she pondered.
Some billionaires' houses do have secret compartments, hidden in the most surreptitious corners of the house. Elena whirled back to the closet. There could also be a secret compartment here, hidden behind the shelves, she thought. She started pushing the shelves gently, watching carefully for anyone to shift oddly. She was moving back, frustrated as she still didn't find anything, when her hands accidentally hit the shelf carrying rows of expensive wristwatches. She moved fast, faster than she had ever moved in all her life, to quickly save some of the wristwatches from falling to the floor. A couple of watches still made it to the floor. Luckily, they didn't break. One of the wristwatches remained on the shelf and that was when she noticed something odd about it, it wasn't real. She pulled the wristwatch and suddenly, there was a mechanical cackle and the shelf started moving backwards, until it revealed another room, nearly half of the first. She immediately picked up the straying wristwatches, rearranged them on the shelf as much as her memory could help her, and hurried into the secret room. Sitting beside another large bed and on a customized bedside drawer was a large safe. Just as she attempted to unlock the safe, a ding reported to her from the elevator. She started in fright. Raphael was back, and he had caught her red-handed. Her whole plan was in shambles, just when she was so close to her goal. She remained in a squat before the safe, transfixed to the spot, terrified to move even an inch. She had been expecting Raphael to pull up into the room, and catch the intruder himself. Instead, it was Luca. He stopped in the closet. He considered the room vaguely before his eyes came to rest on her, his stare cold and distant.
"It was foolish of you to have come here, signora. You didn't think El Capitan would have left his room very accessible without a form of security. There are cameras hidden everywhere, even in the elevator cage, and motion sensors too." Luca said, his eyes rebuked her severely.
She looked around anxiously, her heartbeat rising steadily. The cameras weren't that hard to spot if she had been looking keenly, but unfortunately she hadn't. She spotted cameras in different corners of the room. Her heartbeat was over the roof now, she found it almost hard to breathe. She turned to Luca, confused and conflicted. She had no idea what next to do.
Luca strode further into the room. The coldness in his eyes deepened to one of confusion and anger, as they roamed the length of the room, pondering and calculating. Then he said. "Go, signora. El Capitan will soon be here, and you won't want him to find you here. The motion sensors had informed him of an intruder, and he had returned to the estate to find out who that was. I would stay behind. Someone has to be here to take the fall, else he would go looking into the cameras to find out you were snooping around his room." he yelled "Go. Signora" when she wouldn't budge, and remained terrified and confused, still in a squat before the safe.
She didn't know whether to trust him or not. The more she stared at him, the more she found it hard to get over the brutal way he had murdered Nico and Enzo. Even though he provided a way out of her present dilemma, a part of her warned her that he couldn't be trusted. But she needed him now, he was her only way out of this. She would have to trust him, at least just for this time. She jerked up to her feet, hurrying out of the room and into the elevator. She had barely dropped out of the elevator cage and moved into the corridor that would lead to her room when she heard Raphael's quiet baritone voice coming from the lobby, a large force of gentle tapping noises as a couple of shoes marched for the stairs.
She quickened her pace, practically half-running to her room. She pushed the door, ran in, panting hard. It took another minute before she realized she had company. She turned to stare fully into the room, and there was her father. He stood beside the bed, trembling terribly.