Chapter 3 - THE CHILD’S DRAWING
“Take it off her wrist, Daniel. Before I cut off her hand to get it.”
The words were spoken with such casual, terrifying certainty that the air around them seemed to freeze.
Daniel stared at Matteo, his jaw trembling. He looked like a man who had just stepped off a cliff and was waiting for gravity to catch up.
“Mr. DeLuca,” Daniel choked out, keeping his voice painfully low so the surrounding guests wouldn’t hear. “Please. It’s just a piece of jewelry.”
“It is Grace’s family heirloom,” Matteo corrected, his voice entirely devoid of warmth. “You stole it. You lied about it. And you gave it to another woman to humiliate her.”
Chloe ripped her arm away from Daniel, her face flashing from confusion to absolute horror. “Daniel! Is that true?”
Daniel couldn’t even look at his wife. His eyes were locked on Matteo, wide with the panicked realization that the man standing in front of him wasn’t just a wealthy buyer inspecting a company. He was a predator who already had his teeth at Daniel’s throat.
“I didn’t steal it,” Daniel whispered frantically, his hands shaking as he reached for Chloe’s wrist. “It was mixed up in the boxes. I forgot I had it. I swear.”
He fumbled with the silver clasp. His fingers were trembling so badly he could barely undo it.
Chloe snatched the bracelet off her own wrist and shoved it into Daniel’s chest, her eyes blazing with embarrassment. “Don’t touch me.”
Daniel caught the bracelet. He held it out to Grace, his face burning with a humiliating, ugly red flush.
Grace didn’t take it from him.
She let the silence stretch, forcing him to stand there with his hand extended, feeling the exact weight of his own pathetic betrayal.
Matteo calmly reached over, plucked the silver bracelet from Daniel’s shaking palm, and dropped it into his own suit pocket.
“Do not speak to Grace for the rest of the evening,” Matteo said softly. “Do not look at her. Do not even breathe in her direction. Because if you do, Daniel, I won’t just audit your shipping manifests. I will make sure you never work in logistics again.”
Daniel backed away, grabbing his wife’s elbow and pulling her rapidly toward the far side of the ballroom.
Grace let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Her legs felt weak.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“He is a coward,” Matteo stated, adjusting his cuffs as if he hadn’t just dismantled a man’s pride in under thirty seconds. “Cowards only respond to consequences.”
Before Grace could process what had just happened, a small tug on the hem of her emerald dress made her look down.
A little girl, no older than six, stood there. She wore a frilly pink dress and had a giant satin bow in her blonde hair.
Grace recognized her immediately from Facebook photos she had tortured herself with months ago.
Lily. Chloe’s daughter from a previous relationship. Daniel’s stepdaughter.
“Hi,” Lily said softly, looking up with large, curious blue eyes.
Grace immediately softened, crouching down to be eye-level with the child. “Hi, Lily. Where is your mom?”
“She went to the bathroom and she’s crying,” Lily said matter-of-factly. “Daniel is drinking his yucky juice real fast.”
Grace felt a pang of sympathy for the child, caught in the middle of a toxic mess. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Lily looked closely at Grace. “You’re the lady from the picture in Daniel’s drawer.”
Grace’s breath caught. Daniel kept a picture of her?
“I found a different picture today in his car,” Lily continued, ignoring Grace’s shock. She reached into the small pocket of her pink dress and pulled out a folded piece of lined notebook paper. “I drew a monster on it.”
Lily held it out.
Grace took the paper, smiling gently. “Thank you, sweetie. I love monsters.”
She unfolded it.
It wasn’t a blank piece of paper. It was a printed shipping manifest.
Lily had indeed drawn a large, jagged purple monster over the text. But the typed words beneath the crayon were still perfectly visible.
Grace’s smile faded.
The document had the Alden Freight logo at the top. But underneath it was a handwritten note in thick black marker.
Alden retiring tonight. Terminal 4 is clear. Move the merchandise at 9 PM.
Grace stared at the paper. The handwriting was her father’s.
She knew her dad’s messy scrawl anywhere. Why was her father writing notes about moving "merchandise" to clear a terminal on the exact night of his retirement dinner?
Matteo stepped closer, leaning over her shoulder to look at the paper.
Grace felt him stiffen. The subtle shift in his posture was instantaneous.
“Lily,” Matteo said, his voice lowering to a gentle, careful tone he had never used with adults. “Where exactly did you find this paper in Daniel’s car?”
“In the glove box,” Lily said, swinging her arms slightly. “It was next to the heavy metal thing he yelled at me not to touch.”
Grace looked up at Matteo. “Heavy metal thing?”
Matteo’s jaw clenched. “A gun.”
Grace’s heart stopped. Daniel didn’t own a gun.
Matteo took the paper from Grace’s hand. He stared at the date stamped at the top of the manifest.
“This manifest is for tonight,” Matteo said quietly, his eyes dark and calculating. “Terminal 4 is Alden’s overflow warehouse. It’s been shut down for renovations all month.”
“My dad manages that terminal,” Grace whispered, a cold spike of dread hitting her stomach. “Matteo, why is my father authorizing a secret shipment?”
“Because he’s not,” Matteo replied, his eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on Grace’s father, who was currently laughing near the stage.
“What do you mean?” Grace asked.
“Look at the signature at the bottom, Grace.”
Grace looked past the purple crayon monster.
At the bottom of the page, where her father’s signature should have been, was a hastily scrawled stamp. It was an official Alden Freight approval seal, but the initials next to it didn’t belong to her father.
They were D.P.
Daniel Parker.
“Daniel forged your father’s handwriting,” Matteo said, folding the paper and slipping it into his pocket. “He’s using your father’s retirement party as a distraction to move something through Terminal 4 tonight. And whatever it is, it belongs to the Rossi family.”
“We have to tell my dad,” Grace said, panic rising in her chest.
“No.” Matteo gripped her arm. “If your father finds out Daniel framed him, he’ll confront him here. The Rossis will kill them both to cover their tracks.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We find Daniel’s coat,” Matteo said. “If he forged the terminal clearance, the original access card to the warehouse is still in his pocket. Without it, the trucks can’t get in.”
Matteo stood up, his demeanor shifting back to the cold, untouchable boss.
He didn’t look back as he walked toward the lobby coat check.
Grace followed him.
But as they rounded the corner into the quiet hallway, they stopped dead.
May you like
Standing in front of the coat check counter, holding Daniel’s gray cashmere overcoat, was Grace’s father.
And in his other hand, he was holding a heavy, antique gold pocket watch.
