Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Yellow Room
The first week at the Moretti estate was a blur of exhausting labor and strict rules. Signora Greco ran the household like a military garrison. Every floor had to be polished to a mirror finish; every silver fork had to be inspected under a magnifying glass. Lily didn't mind the hard work. Her muscles ached by evening, but she was grateful for the steady paycheck and the small, drafty room on the fourth floor where she and Mia were permitted to sleep.
Because Mia couldn't be left alone while Lily worked in the grand formal rooms, Signora Greco had made a rare exception, allowing the toddler to sit quietly in the corner of the pantry with a box of coloring books. Mia was a quiet child, observant and well-behaved, spending hours drawing pictures of rabbits and suns with a set of broken crayons.
On the fifth day, however, disaster struck in the form of a rogue red crayon mark.
Signora Greco had sent Lily upstairs to the second-floor linen closet to retrieve a stack of fresh damask napkins. While carrying them back down the eastern corridor, Lily’s foot caught on the edge of an antique Persian runner. She stumbled, dropping half of the napkins. As she scrambled to pick them up, she noticed something odd.
One of the doors at the very end of the hallway—a door she had never seen open—was ajar by a few inches. A gentle draft was blowing from inside, carrying a faint, sweet scent of lavender and old dust.
Curiosity, combined with a strange, inexplicable pull, made Lily stand up and walk toward it. She pushed the door open slightly wider and gasped.
It was a nursery.
The walls were painted a soft, pale yellow. A white crib stood by the window, draped in lace. A rocking chair sat beside it, and a tiny pair of pristine white shoes rested on a changing table. But what caught Lily’s breath was the overwhelming stillness of the room. It felt frozen in time, like a photograph kept in a locket.
"What are you doing?"
A voice cut through the silence like a razor blade. Lily spun around to find Signora Greco standing at the end of the hall, her face drained of all color, her hands trembling as she gripped her apron.
"I... I'm so sorry," Lily stammered, stepping backward out of the room. "The door was open. I didn't mean to—"
"Never," Signora Greco hissed, stepping forward and slamming the door shut with a sharp click. She locked it with a small brass key she pulled from her pocket. "Never open this door again, Miss Carter. If the master were to find you here, you would be out on the street before you could blink. Or worse."
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"Whose room is it?" Lily whispered, feeling a chill run down her spine.
Signora Greco looked down the empty corridor, her expression softening into a deep, heavy sorrow. "It belongs to a ghost, child. Now come away. And let us pray he never finds out you were looking."
