Chapter 2 - THE DRAWING IN THE GROCERY BAG
I knelt on the cold linoleum floor of the grocery store, staring at the little girl holding her baby brother.
The blue flower bracelet on her wrist seemed to glow under the harsh fluorescent lights.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm I hadn't felt in over a decade.
"Sweetheart," I asked again, my voice barely more than a ragged whisper. "Did your mother tell you anything else before she disappeared?"
The girl, whose name I didn't even know, looked down at her worn sneakers.
She hugged her baby brother tighter. The infant let out a soft, hungry whimper.
"She told me to hide," the girl whispered.
I swallowed hard, fighting the tears burning in my eyes. "Hide from who?"
"The man with the scar on his neck."
A chill violently swept through my aging bones.
A scar on his neck.
Daniel Herrera, my former head of security, didn't have a scar on his neck. But my younger brother, Roberto, did. A long, jagged line he'd gotten in a car accident when we were teenagers.
"Did she give you anything else?" I asked, desperation leaking into my tone. "Besides the letter?"
The little girl hesitated. She looked at the cashier, who was watching us with wide, confused eyes, and then back to me.
Slowly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. It wasn't a letter this time. It was a child’s drawing done in cheap wax crayons.
"Mommy said if she didn't come back in three days, I had to find a man with a silver cane," the girl said, her voice trembling. "She said you would know this place."
I took the drawing from her small, fragile hands.
It was a crude sketch of a large building. But it wasn't just any building. The girl had drawn a very specific iron gate, twisting like thorny vines, and a stone gargoyle with a broken wing resting on the roof.
The air in my lungs vanished.
It was the Blackwood Estate.
A secluded, heavily forested property I had purchased thirty years ago. I hadn't been there in a decade. I had transferred the deed to my brother Roberto eleven years ago, exactly one week after Elena supposedly died.
Why would Elena tell her daughter to show me a property owned by the very man who might have taken her?
"What is your name, little one?" I asked, gently touching her shoulder.
"Sofia," she whispered. "And this is Leo."
Sofia. My granddaughter.
The realization hit me with the force of a freight train. I had a granddaughter. I had a grandson. And their mother—my beautiful, brilliant Elena—was trapped in a nightmare I had unknowingly funded.
"Sofia, you don't have to be afraid anymore," I said, forcing a strength into my voice that I didn't truly feel. "I'm going to take care of you. Both of you."
I stood up, gripping my silver cane. I turned to the cashier, pulled a crisp hundred-euro note from my wallet, and placed it on the counter.
"Keep the change," I said. "And if anyone comes in here asking if you've seen two children, you tell them you haven't seen a soul. Do you understand?"
The cashier nodded fervently, quickly sweeping the money into the register.
I guided Sofia and little Leo out of the store and into the cold evening air. My black town car was idling at the curb. Thomas, my loyal chauffeur of twenty years, stepped out and opened the door.
"Mr. Montenegro?" Thomas asked, his eyes darting to the children in soiled clothes.
"Get us to the main estate, Thomas," I ordered, my tone leaving no room for questions. "And lock the doors."
Once we were safely inside the leather-scented interior of the car, I turned the heat up for the shivering children. Sofia relaxed slightly, her heavy eyelids drooping as the warmth washed over her.
But my mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour.
Roberto. My own flesh and blood. Had he fabricated Elena's death to steal her inheritance? Had he kept her locked away at the Blackwood Estate for eleven years?
As we drove through the rain-slicked streets, I looked at the child's drawing again.
Something wasn't right.
I flipped the paper over. On the back, written in faint, hurried pencil, were three words in Elena's handwriting.
He protected us.
I stared at the words until my vision blurred.
He protected us? Who? Roberto?
If Roberto had protected them, why had Elena been hiding? Why had she disappeared three days ago? And why was Roberto suddenly the man with the scar that Sofia feared?
The pieces of the puzzle were jagged, cutting into my mind as I tried to force them together.
"Mr. Montenegro," Thomas said from the driver's seat, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. "There's a vehicle following us. A black SUV. No license plates."
My blood ran cold.
"Lose them, Thomas," I commanded.
The heavy engine of the town car roared as Thomas slammed his foot on the gas. We tore through the narrow city streets, tires screeching around tight corners. Sofia gasped, clutching baby Leo tightly against her chest.
"It's okay, sweetheart," I promised, unbuckling my seatbelt and reaching beneath my seat. My fingers closed around the cold steel of the emergency revolver I always kept hidden there. "Nobody is going to hurt you."
Thomas was a master behind the wheel. With a sudden, violent swerve down a dark alleyway and a sharp turn into an underground parking structure, we lost the tail.
We drove the rest of the way to my fortified mansion in suffocating silence.
When we finally pulled through the towering iron gates of my home, a temporary wave of relief washed over me. The armed guards patrolling the grounds gave me a sense of security I desperately needed.
"Take the children to the kitchen," I told Thomas as we stepped into the grand foyer. "Have Maria make them whatever they want. I need to make a phone call."
I watched them walk away, my heart aching with a fierce, newfound love.
Then, gripping my cane, I walked down the long, shadowed hallway toward my private study. I needed to call my security team. I needed to raid the Blackwood Estate tonight.
I pushed the heavy oak doors of my study open.
The room was pitch black, save for the flashes of lightning illuminating the large window.
But I wasn't alone.
Sitting behind my mahogany desk, illuminated by a brief flash of lightning, was a man.
He was holding a torn, blood-stained winter coat. A coat I immediately recognized as the one Elena had been wearing the day she disappeared.
I raised my revolver, my hands shaking violently.
"Turn on the light," I ordered, my finger tightening on the trigger.
The desk lamp clicked on, casting a harsh yellow glow across the room.
Sitting in my chair, pale and sweating, was my brother, Roberto.
And resting on the desk next to Elena's bloody coat was a silver pocket watch.
May you like
The exact watch I had given to Daniel Herrera eleven years ago.
"You shouldn't have brought those kids here, Ernesto," Roberto whispered, his voice trembling with terror. "You've just killed us all."
