Chapter 1 A house that was never innocent
I was living peacefully with my little family consisting of my grandma, father, mother, uncle, aunt, a little princess who died just after one year of her birth, and my cousin brother John. Our location was a little house, a four-bedroom home with a big hall and a terrace that served as the center of our party organization. We had a high reputation in society; my father was the chairman of a multi-million-dollar company, a man whose influence commanded respect throughout the city. My aunt was a widely successful blogger with millions of followers. We were wealthy, admired, and constantly surrounded by people who wanted to be part of our world.
We had a reputation to protect.
And we protected it flawlessly.
Yet, despite all our wealth and influence, we did not live in some sprawling countryside estate or a heavily guarded mansion; we lived in the heart of Paris in a relatively compact four-bedroom house.
It wasn't particularly large for a family like ours. But it was home.
The heart of the house was its enormous central hall and the sweeping rooftop terrace. The terrace often became the center of our extravagant gatherings, filled with Paris’s elite, expensive champagne, music, laughter, and endless conversations beneath the stars.
From the outside, our life looked perfect. But every house has its secrets.
Ours was buried beneath our feet.
Because the house was always crowded, John and I had to share a bedroom. Space was tight, but we’d grown used to it.
There was only one strange feature in our room that we had never paid much attention to—a heavy iron trap door built into the floor.
It was sealed shut.
We had always assumed it led to an old underground water tank or some forgotten part of the house's plumbing system. For years, we ignored it. We walked over it every single day without giving it a second thought.
Until that night.
It began with a strange sound.
A faint rattling came from beneath the floor.
John and I froze.
Then came the chill.
A strange, chilling draft began seeping through the narrow cracks around the metal trap door. The floor was cold, and it vibrated slightly beneath our feet.
I stared at John.
He stared back at me.
Neither of us spoke.
Our breath caught in our throats as an awful realization slowly began to take shape.
Maybe it wasn't a water tank.
Maybe we had been wrong all along.
I moved closer to the trap door and noticed something I’d never seen before.
A faint, dark stain surrounded one edge of the metal.
Then came the smell.
It was metallic.
Damp.
And strangely foul.
My stomach tightened.
John stepped backward.
"Do you smell that?" he whispered.
I nodded.
Neither of us dared to touch the latch.
For years, we had believed that whatever lay beneath that door was harmless. Now standing over it in the dim light of our bedroom, I wasn't so sure.
Was it really just a tank?
Or had someone deliberately hidden something beneath our home?
Something they never wanted us to find?
I looked at John.
He looked at me.
And for the first time, we both understood the same terrifying truth:
Our house had never been as innocent as we thought.
