Chapter 3 - THE SCARRED WATCH
The smoke was thick and acrid, burning the back of my throat the moment we hit the second-floor landing. The grand chandelier flickered as the mansion's automated safety systems triggered, shutting down the main power grid. Emergency lights bathed the hallways in an eerie, pulsing red glow.
Luca moved like a man possessed. He took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the panicked cries of his security detail trying to hold him back.
"Stay back, Hannah!" he yelled over his shoulder, coughing as the black smoke grew denser.
"I know her hiding spots!" I yelled back, refusing to stop. I wasn't just a maid. Over the last eleven months, I had become the closest thing Sophie had to a mother. I knew that when she was scared, she didn't hide under the bed. She hid inside the false bottom of her antique mahogany wardrobe.
We reached the third floor. The heat was suffocating. The fire was concentrated entirely in Sophie's wing. It wasn't an electrical accident. Someone had deliberately set it to destroy evidence.
Luca kicked down the heavy oak door to Sophie's bedroom. A wall of heat hit us, but the flames were mostly contained to the curtains and the rug.
"Sophie!" Luca roared, his voice cracking with a father's pure terror. "Sophie, piccola mia, where are you?"
I dropped to my hands and knees, crawling beneath the worst of the smoke, and scrambled toward the massive antique wardrobe. The wood was blistering hot to the touch.
"Sophie, it's Hannah!" I coughed, pulling the heavy doors open. "It's safe, baby! Come out!"
I reached down and yanked up the false floorboard.
Empty.
There was no little girl inside. But resting in the dark, hidden compartment was something else. A piece of crumpled, heavy-stock paper.
I grabbed it, my fingers trembling, and pulled it into the red emergency light.
It was one of Sophie's drawings. She drew constantly, processing her mother's death years ago through crayons and markers. But this drawing wasn't of oceans or animals.
It depicted a crude, childlike sketch of the mansion's heavy iron gates. A woman with long blonde hair—Vanessa—was standing by the gate, holding it open. Walking through the gate was a massive, shadowy figure of a man. The man had no face, but Sophie had drawn his left hand with meticulous, terrifying detail.
The hand was missing its pinky and ring finger.
"Mr. Moretti!" I screamed, waving the paper as the fire department sirens wailed in the distance.
Luca grabbed the drawing from my hands. His dark eyes scanned the childlike scribbles, and I watched the realization hit him like a physical blow. The panic in his eyes instantly hardened into something sharp, cold, and utterly lethal.
"Dante," Luca whispered.
"Who is Dante?" I asked, choking on the smoke.
Luca grabbed my arm, hauling me out of the burning room just as the ceiling began to splinter. "My former underboss. I exiled him to Sicily five years ago for stealing from the family. He lost those two fingers as punishment."
We raced back down the grand staircase, breaking through the crowd of coughing guests and firefighters rushing in.
In the main foyer, Luca's loyal head of security, a massive, bald man named Carlo, was holding Vanessa by the arms. She was struggling, her pristine designer gown smeared with soot, the facade of the perfect mafia fiancée completely shattered.
"Let me go!" Vanessa shrieked. "Luca, tell this animal to unhand me!"
Luca walked up to her, his silence more terrifying than any scream. He stopped mere inches from her face. He held up Sophie's drawing.
"You let him in," Luca said. It wasn't a question.
Vanessa’s eyes darted nervously to the drawing. "I don't know what you're talking about! That's a child's stupid doodle!"
"You paid your worthless brother to be a distraction with a suitcase full of my cash," Luca continued, his voice dangerously level. "You set the fire in my daughter's room to destroy any evidence of a struggle. And you opened the gate for a man who wants my head on a platter."
"You're insane!" Vanessa spat, though tears of genuine fear were beginning to streak her makeup. "I love Sophie! I would never—"
"Then explain this," I interrupted.
I stepped out from behind Luca. In the chaos of the dining room earlier, when Vanessa had been frozen by the grand staircase, I had seen her holding something. I reached into the pocket of my black maid's apron and pulled out the heavy, scarred brass pocket watch I had snatched from the floor when she dropped it during the panic.
I held it up. "This fell out of your hand when the fire alarms went off."
Luca stared at the brass watch. He recognized it instantly. It didn't belong to Dante.
"That's Silas's watch," Luca said, his voice dropping to a deadly octave.
Silas. Luca's uncle. The man who had acted as Luca's trusted advisor since Luca's father died.
Vanessa's face went completely slack. She had been caught in a web of her own making.
Before Luca could demand an answer, the heavy mahogany doors of the mansion's study banged open. Silas stepped out into the foyer. He was a distinguished man in his sixties, with silver hair and a sharp, tailored suit. But right now, his face was a mask of cold fury.
He held a ringing cell phone in his hand.
"Luca," Silas said, ignoring the chaos, the smoke, and the firefighters. He held the phone out. "It's Dante. He says he has Sophie. And he wants the ledger."
I looked at Silas, then down at the brass watch in my hand. Why did Vanessa have Silas's watch?
May you like
Silas wasn't the victim here. He was the architect.
And as Silas looked at me, a slow, chilling smile spread across his face.
