Chapter 5 - THE BOY IN THE KITCHEN
The lie burned like acid in my throat. I stared at the floor, unable to meet Luca’s eyes.
Luca studied me in the heavy silence. He wasn’t a fool. He was a man who had built an empire by reading the subtle shifts in people’s behavior. He saw the tremble in my hands, the sudden pallor of my face. But to my immense relief, he didn’t push.
“Leave us,” Luca said to me, his voice flat.
I scurried out of the room, my legs feeling like lead. As soon as I hit the hallway, I gasped for air, leaning against the flocked wallpaper. My mother. They had someone watching my mother. I needed to call her, to warn her, but if Vanessa’s men were listening, I could trigger the very thing I was trying to prevent.
I hurried down the back servant stairs, my mind racing. Vanessa said she and Julian had been raising the boy. But where? They lived in a luxury penthouse downtown—a place highly visible to the public. You don’t hide a kidnapped mafia heir in a glass tower.
I burst into the kitchen. The catering staff was in a frenzy, aggressively packing up the lavish untouched feast. Trays of lobster canapés and filet mignon were being dumped into heavy black trash bags.
“Hey! Watch it!” the head chef barked as I nearly collided with him.
“Sorry,” I muttered, stepping out of the way.
I retreated toward the deep walk-in pantry to catch my breath. As I pushed the heavy stainless-steel door open, a tiny sound caught my attention. A muffled, rhythmic thumping.
It was coming from the very back of the pantry, behind towering stacks of flour sacks and canned tomatoes.
I frowned, stepping into the frigid room. The heavy door swung shut behind me, cutting off the noise of the kitchen.
“Hello?” I whispered.
The thumping stopped.
I crept closer, moving a large box of paper napkins. Tucked into the narrow space between the shelving unit and the wall, a small figure was curled into a tight ball, his arms wrapped around his knees.
It was a little boy.
He was wearing an oversized catering uniform—a white button-down shirt that swallowed his small frame and black pants pinned up at the cuffs. His dark hair was a messy mop, and his large, terrified eyes stared up at me.
My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t need the pocket watch to know who this was. He had the same piercing, dark eyes as Luca.
This was Leo. Luca’s missing nephew.
“Hey,” I said softly, dropping to my knees so I was eye-level with him. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m Sophie.”
The boy shrank back, pressing himself harder against the cold wall. He clutched something tightly in his small hands—a thick, folded piece of drawing paper.
Why was he here? Why would Julian and Vanessa bring their ultimate leverage to the very house they were trying to rob?
Unless… they didn’t plan on taking him back. If Julian’s plan had worked, Luca would be dead tomorrow. They brought the boy here to claim the estate immediately. He was their prop.
“Are you cold?” I asked gently, ignoring the massive implications for a moment. I unpinned my white maid’s apron and draped it over his shivering shoulders like a blanket.
He blinked, surprised by the gesture. “You’re not mad?” he whispered, his voice barely a squeak.
“Mad? Why would I be mad?”
“I dropped the tray. The big man yelled at me and put me in here. He said if I make a sound, I don’t get to go home to my mom.”
My heart ached. Vanessa wasn’t his mom. She was his captor.
“The big man?” I asked. “Do you mean the chef?”
The boy shook his head. “No. The man with the scar on his neck. He gave me this paper and told me to give it to the boss. But I got scared.”
A cold dread washed over me. The man with the scar on his neck. Marco. Luca’s personal bodyguard, the man who stood outside his door every night. The man who was currently guarding Julian Rossi downstairs.
The rot in Luca’s inner circle went deeper than anyone realized.
“Can I see the paper?” I asked gently, holding out my hand.
Leo hesitated, then slowly handed me the crumpled drawing paper.
I unfolded it. It wasn’t a drawing. It was a photocopy of a schematic. A blueprint of the Moretti mansion.
There were red X’s marked across the map. One on the master suite. One on the security control room. And one in the basement study.
Beneath the blueprint, scrawled in black marker, were three words: Midnight. No survivors.
I looked up at the digital clock on the pantry wall. It was 11:42 PM.
Panic seized my chest. This wasn’t just a heist or an extortion plot anymore. It was an assassination. Julian hadn’t failed when Luca discovered the truth; he had simply accelerated the timeline. The catering crew wasn’t just packing up food—they were planting the explosives.
“Leo,” I said, my voice trembling but firm. “I need you to be very brave for me right now. We have to leave this room, and we have to do it quietly.”
He whimpered, shaking his head. “The scarred man said he’d hurt my mom.”
“I promise you, I won’t let anyone hurt you or your family,” I swore, taking his small, cold hand. “But we have to go find your uncle.”
His eyes widened. “My uncle?”
Before I could explain, the heavy pantry door swung open with a screech of hinges.
The frigid air of the walk-in cooler was suddenly broken by the warm, chaotic noise of the kitchen. But the noise died instantly.
Standing in the doorway was Marco. His hand rested casually on the butt of the pistol holstered at his hip. The jagged scar on his neck looked bright red under the fluorescent lights.
He looked at me, then down at the boy, and finally at the blueprint in my hand.
May you like
Marco smiled, a dead, soulless expression.
“Well,” Marco said smoothly, stepping into the pantry and pulling the heavy steel door shut behind him, locking us in. “Looks like the maid found the rat. Too bad neither of you are walking out of this fridge.”
