Chapter 2 - THE CRAYON DRAWING
The study was quiet, smelling of old paper, leather, and rain.
Dr. Mercer was an older man with gentle hands. He didn’t ask unnecessary questions. He simply produced a pair of medical shears and carefully cut away the athletic tape binding Clara’s left wrist.
When the tape fell away, the two wooden spoons clattered softly onto the mahogany desk.
Clara looked away. She couldn’t bear to look at her own arm.
The wrist was swollen to nearly twice its normal size, the skin mottled with ugly shades of purple and black. Dr. Mercer pressed gently against the radius bone.
Clara couldn’t stop the sharp, breathless gasp that escaped her lips.
“It’s fractured,” Dr. Mercer said quietly, opening his black leather bag. “A defensive break. The kind you get when you throw your arm up to stop something heavy from hitting you. Or when someone much stronger than you twists it until the bone gives out.”
He looked up at Clara over his reading glasses.
“You didn’t fall, Clara.”
“I did,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I slipped.”
“You’re terrified,” the doctor said gently, pulling out a pre-formed fiberglass splint. “And you’re safe here. Mr. Castillion does not tolerate violence in his home.”
“You don’t understand,” Clara said, her voice barely a breath. “The violence is already in his home.”
Before the doctor could reply, the heavy oak doors of the study opened.
Leo Castillion walked in.
He had taken off his suit jacket, leaving him in a crisp black button-down shirt. The absolute stillness he carried with him seemed to suck the oxygen out of the room. He didn’t look at the doctor. He looked directly at Clara’s mangled wrist.
For a fraction of a second, the muscles in his jaw tightened.
“How bad is it, Arthur?” Leo asked, his voice low.
“A clean fracture, but it needs a proper cast and four weeks of rest,” Dr. Mercer replied, wrapping a soft bandage over the splint to hold it in place. “I’ve given her a mild painkiller. She needs to go home, Leo.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Leo said.
Clara panicked. She pushed herself up from the leather chair, clutching her injured arm to her chest. “I have to go. My shift is over. I need to—”
“Sit down, Clara.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a command wrapped in velvet.
Clara froze, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Leo pulled his phone from his pocket. He looked at the screen, then back at her. “I just received a message from my security team. I asked them to check the cameras in the service hallway between 6:30 and 7:30 this morning. The exact time you said you fell.”
Clara stopped breathing.
“The footage for that entire hour is gone,” Leo said, taking a slow step toward her. “Deleted from the master server. Only three men in this estate have the clearance to wipe security footage. Myself. My head of security, Daniel. And Vincent Marlowe.”
He stopped right in front of her.
“So I’m going to ask you one more time, Clara. And this time, you are going to tell me the truth. Did Vincent do this to you?”
“If I tell you,” Clara whispered, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes, “he’ll hurt her.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed instantly. “Her?”
Clara realized her mistake, but it was too late. The painkiller was making her dizzy, stripping away the walls she had spent years building. She reached into her apron pocket with her good hand to grab a tissue.
As she pulled it out, a folded piece of paper came with it, fluttering to the expensive Persian rug.
Leo reached down and picked it up.
He unfolded it.
It was a child’s drawing. Done in waxy red and blue crayons. It depicted a stick figure woman holding hands with a smaller stick figure girl, standing under a bright yellow sun. At the bottom, in messy, oversized letters, it read: For Mommy.
Leo stared at the drawing for a long time. The silence in the room shifted from interrogative to something deeply protective.
“You have a daughter,” Leo said softly.
“She’s six,” Clara sobbed, covering her mouth. “Her name is Lily. Please, Mr. Castillion. I just need to get to her. I need to take her and leave.”
Leo didn’t answer. He turned the drawing over.
His eyes locked onto the back of the paper.
Clara had brought a stack of scrap paper home from the estate’s recycling bin a week ago for Lily to draw on. It was a common maid’s trick to save money on art supplies.
But Leo wasn’t looking at the drawing anymore. He was staring at the printed text on the back.
It was a shipping manifest.
“Where did you get this piece of paper, Clara?” Leo asked, his voice suddenly dropping an octave, carrying a dangerous, razor-sharp edge.
Clara blinked through her tears. “In the laundry room. This morning. Next to the incinerator. There was a whole stack of them. I just took one for Lily.”
Leo’s thumb brushed over a stamped code at the bottom of the manifest.
V.M. – DOCK 4 – CLEARED.
May you like
Vincent Marlowe’s initials.
“He didn’t break your wrist because you fell,” Leo said, his eyes rising to meet hers. The look in them made a shiver run down her spine. “He broke it because he caught you taking this.”
