The chapel was older than the mansion.
Hidden at the far end of the estate, tucked behind weeping willows and iron sculptures, it stood like a forgotten monument silent, solemn, and steeped in secrets. The stained glass was cracked. Vines crawled up the walls like veins. But Luna's heart thudded the moment they stepped inside.
"It's exactly as I remember," she whispered.
Damien scanned the room. "You've been here before?"
Luna nodded slowly, her fingers brushing against the edge of the altar. "When I was a child. My father used to bring me here when he didn't want the guards to hear. He said this was where we'd keep the truth."
The marble floor creaked under their feet as they moved down the aisle. Moonlight streamed through broken panes, catching the dust in golden swirls.
"Where's the vault?" Damien asked.
Luna knelt near the altar, running her hand across the carved lion insignia the Virelli crest. Her fingers found the grooves she remembered. She pressed them in a precise sequence, and with a faint groan, the floor beneath the altar shifted.
A square panel of stone slid open, revealing a spiral staircase disappearing into the dark.
Damien raised an eyebrow. "How many secrets did your family bury?"
Luna smirked faintly. "Enough to start a war. Or end one."
They descended into the darkness.
The air grew colder. The walls narrowed. It smelled of dust and iron and old blood. At the bottom, a steel door waited aged, bolted shut with a triple-lock system bearing both the Virelli and Wolf family seals.
"Looks like your father trusted mine more than he let on," Damien muttered, examining the dual crests.
"Or he feared him enough to involve him," Luna said. "Either way… we open it together."
Their fingers moved in tandem, unlocking the vault.
The final latch gave way with a metallic click, and the door creaked open.
Inside was a small chamber lined with wooden crates, leather-bound ledgers, and thick folders marked in red ink. Luna's breath caught as she stepped inside.
"This is it," she whispered. "All of it records, names, payments, alliances, betrayals. Everything."
Damien pulled out a black file marked Project Scorpion.
His face darkened as he flipped through its contents.
"These were experiments," he muttered. "Human trafficking, biological testing, traitors paid off with blood money. This wasn't just a crime syndicate. This was a shadow empire."
Luna's hands trembled, but she held onto the edge of the table for balance. "My father wanted to expose them. He was going to take it all down."
"That's why they killed him," Damien said grimly. "And why they'll come for you next."
Luna's eyes hardened. "Let them."
She turned to him, her voice low and resolute.
"I'm not just here to reclaim the name Virelli. I'm here to dismantle everything it protected."
Damien watched her for a moment then nodded once.
"Then we start with this," he said, holding up a USB drive nestled inside the folder. "The world doesn't know the firestorm you're about to unleash."
A slow smile curved her lips.
"They will."
And above them, in the chapel where the dead whispered and the past still lingered, the first tremor of war was set loose.
Luna stared at the USB drive Damien held, her pulse pounding with purpose. Somewhere deep in her chest, something old stirred something she had buried when she walked away from the name Virelli.
But now, it clawed its way to the surface.
"Download everything," she said. "Make backups. We can't trust anything until it's in multiple hands."
Damien was already at work, pulling a portable drive from his coat and connecting it to the dusty laptop buried beneath a pile of files. The screen flickered to life, revealing encrypted folders lined with code names, offshore accounts, bribes proof that the Romano Syndicate and its allies had poisoned cities from the shadows.
Luna stepped back, absorbing it all. "This could destroy every major family."
Damien's fingers paused on the keyboard. "It could also get us both killed."
"Wouldn't be the first time someone tried," she replied darkly.
The chamber shook faintly an echo of footsteps, or something worse, above them.
Damien's head snapped up. "We're not alone."
Luna crossed to the wall and grabbed the only weapon in sight: an old dagger engraved with the Virelli crest. The steel was cold, but it felt natural in her grip.
"Keep copying," she ordered. "I'll buy us time."
Before Damien could protest, the lights above the staircase flickered and went dark.
Voices.
Heavy, armored boots thudding against stone.
"They found the chapel," he growled. "We're out of time."
"Almost done." He pulled the USB and stuffed both it and the portable drive into an inner pocket. "If I don't make it"
"You will," Luna said, cutting him off. "We both will."
With a shared glance, they slipped from the vault into the passage above, sealing the door behind them just as gunfire erupted from the chapel's entrance.
Two masked men burst through the stained-glass threshold, weapons drawn.
Luna didn't hesitate.
She threw herself into a low spin, slicing upward with the dagger. One assailant crumpled with a choked cry. Damien fired cleanly at the second, dropping him where he stood.
A third came through the shadows, but Luna was already in motion fueled not just by adrenaline, but by something deeper. Something ancestral. Her blood knew this fight.
She drove the dagger through his chest, her breath ragged.
Then silence.
Just the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears, and Damien breathing hard beside her.
"You fight like a Virelli," he said.
She wiped the blade on her coat. "And you talk too much.
They moved quickly through the back exit of the chapel, disappearing into the woods behind the estate. The moon lit their path, silver and cold.
As they vanished into the trees, the mansion behind them stood in eerie silence once more.
But something had changed.
The past wasn't buried anymore.
It was wide awake and burning.