The walk back to the bookstore was silent.
The town looked peaceful under the soft glow of street lamps, but Elena felt like every shadow was watching them.
Inside the bookstore, Daniel locked the door behind them.
"We're missing something," he said, pacing slowly.
Elena placed the old municipal file notes on the table and read the line again:
Subterranean structure found unstable.
Access sealed upon mayoral order.
"That structure," she murmured. "It wasn't my family's cellar."
Daniel nodded.
"It was on Bellini land."
"But why seal it?" Elena asked. "Why not destroy it?"
Daniel leaned against the table, thinking.
"Because maybe they couldn't."
Elena frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Old tunnels," he said. "Wine cellars.
Storage passages. Some of these towns were built on them centuries ago."
Elena suddenly remmbered something.
"My grandfather once mentioned tunnels beneath Seravalle," she said slowly. "He said they were used during wars… to move supplies between vineyards."
Daniel's eyes sharpened.
"If Lucia died somewhere else—"
"They might have moved her."
The room felt colder.
Elena ran upstairs to the attic and returned with an old wooden box filled with family documents and maps.
Most were faded.
Some were fragile enough to crumble.
But near the bottom, she found it.
A hand-drawn map of the old vineyard properties surrounding Seravalle.
Daniel leaned closer.
The vineyards formed a rough circle around the town.
Small symbols marked wine storage cellars.
But there was something else.
Thin pencil lines connecting several of them underground.
Tunnels.
Elena traced one of the lines with her finger.
It ran from the Moretti cellar…
Across the hillside…
To Bellini property.
Daniel looked at her slowly.
"They didn't just hide a body," he said.
"They moved it through the tunnels."
Elena's heart pounded.
"And if that sealed structure was part of the tunnel system…"
Daniel finished the thought quietly.
"Then the real truth might still be buried underground."
Outside, thunder rolled faintly in the distance.
A storm was coming.
And for the first time, Elena realized something terrifying.
To uncover the truth about Lucia Bellini…
They might have to go into the tunnels themselves.