Chapter 3 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
The silver bracelet gleamed mockingly in the soft pink light of the bedroom.
I stared at it, my mind struggling to process the impossible.
Mia was gone.
The heavy, suffocating silence of the empty room pressed against my chest. The two armed guards behind me began cursing wildly into their radios, their voices overlapping in a frantic panic.
"Boss, the girl is gone. Repeat, Mia is not in the room. The tracker was left behind."
I didn't wait for Damian's reply.
I stepped closer to the bed, my eyes scanning the pristine pink sheets. My throat burned with every shallow breath I took. How did Marcus get her out? There were guards at every door. The windows were locked from the inside.
Then, I saw it.
Tucked slightly beneath the pillow, right where the silver bracelet had been resting, was a piece of paper.
I reached out with trembling fingers and pulled it free.
It was a child's drawing. Done in heavy, aggressive strokes of black and red crayon.
It wasn't one of Mia's usual drawings of unicorns or sunshine.
It depicted a massive, dark boat sitting on black water. Next to the boat was a tall, crumbling lighthouse. And standing on the dock was a stick figure of a little girl, holding hands with a man whose face was colored entirely in red.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway.
Damian burst into the room. He didn't look like a mafia boss anymore. He looked like a father whose world had just been torn apart.
He saw the empty bed. He saw the silver bracelet.
He let out a sound that I would never forget—a raw, guttural noise of absolute despair. He fell to his knees beside the bed, his massive hands gripping the pink comforter as if he could somehow pull his daughter back from the fabric.
"Damian," I whispered, the pain in my throat forgotten.
I knelt beside him on the thick carpet. I held out the child's drawing.
Damian blinked, his dark eyes focusing on the crumpled paper in my hand. He took it slowly, his hands shaking.
He stared at the black boat. The crumbling lighthouse.
The despair in his eyes instantly hardened into something terrifying. Pure, lethal clarity.
"I know this place," Damian said, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumble. "It's the old Castellano boathouse. On the north edge of the harbor. My father abandoned it twenty years ago."
"Marcus is taking her there?" I managed to rasp.
"It's a fortress," Damian said, standing up. "Accessible only by a single private road. If he gets her inside, a small army couldn't break through without heavy casualties."
He turned to his security chief. "Get the cars ready. Every man we have. We leave in two minutes."
The guards sprinted out of the room.
I stood up, gripping the edge of the bed for balance. "Damian, the detonator. Marcus said he planted explosives."
"He was bluffing," a voice said from the doorway.
We both turned.
Henry was leaning against the doorframe. He looked broken. Two guards stood behind him, their weapons trained on his back.
"Marcus never gave me explosives," Henry said, his voice hollow. "He just told me to say that if he ever got cornered. He needed a distraction to walk out the front door. He already had his men sneak Mia out through the laundry chutes an hour before dinner."
Damian walked toward Henry. He didn't look angry. He looked exhausted.
"You betrayed my family, Henry," Damian said quietly.
"I was trying to protect mine," Henry replied, a single tear slipping down his cheek. "Marcus took my wife, Damian. He has her locked in a warehouse somewhere. If I didn't help him steal the tracker, he was going to send her back to me in pieces."
The second reversal of the night hit me.
Henry wasn't just blackmailed. He was grieving. He was a man forced to choose between the woman he loved and the child he was sworn to protect.
"Where is your wife, Henry?" Damian asked.
"I don't know," Henry sobbed. "He wouldn't tell me."
Damian looked at his guards. "Put Henry in my car. He's coming with us to the boathouse."
"Boss, he's a traitor," the security chief protested.
"He's a husband," Damian corrected coldly. "And he knows Marcus's protocols better than anyone. Put him in the car."
Damian turned back to me. His eyes softened for a fraction of a second.
"Stay here, Olivia," he said gently. "Lock the doors. My men will protect you. You've done enough."
He turned to leave.
I looked down at the bed. At the child's drawing Damian had dropped on the mattress.
I picked it up, staring at the red-faced man holding the little girl's hand.
Something nagged at the back of my mind. A memory from earlier that afternoon.
Mia had been coloring in the library. I had brought her a glass of milk. She had been drawing a unicorn. I clearly remembered handing her a fresh box of crayons.
The red crayon had been missing from the box.
I had asked her where it was. Mia had smiled and said, "The nice man took it. He said he needed it to draw a secret."
But Marcus hadn't been at the house this afternoon.
Marcus had been in court all day. I had seen it on the news.
"Wait," I rasped, my throat screaming in protest.
Damian stopped in the doorway and looked back.
"Marcus didn't draw this," I whispered, holding up the paper. "He wasn't here today. Someone else was in the library with Mia. Someone else gave her this drawing."
Damian frowned, walking back toward me. "Who?"
I closed my eyes, forcing my mind to replay the afternoon. Who had visited the house? Who had access to the private library?
"He was wearing a long coat," I whispered, the memory surfacing. "He had a slight limp. I thought it was the pool maintenance man."
Damian went completely rigid. The color drained from his face faster than it had when he heard the tape.
He grabbed my shoulders, his grip almost painful. "A limp? Which leg?"
"His left," I breathed.
Damian let go of me and stumbled backward, hitting the edge of a mahogany dresser. He looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"Damian?" I asked, terrified by his reaction.
He didn't answer. He turned to the massive wooden closet in Mia's room. He tore the doors open and began frantically tearing through her clothes, tossing expensive dresses and coats onto the floor.
"Boss, what are you looking for?" the security chief asked, rushing into the room.
Damian didn't stop. He reached the very back of the closet, pulling down a small, dusty cardboard box from the top shelf.
He ripped the tape off and upended the box onto the floor.
Old toys tumbled out. A broken music box. And a small, faded leather wallet.
Damian grabbed the wallet. His hands were shaking violently. He opened it and pulled out a single, yellowed piece of paper.
It was a train ticket.
Dated exactly four years ago. The exact night Damian's wife, Elena, had died in a tragic car accident.
Damian stared at the ticket, his chest heaving.
May you like
He looked up at me, his eyes filled with a horror that defied logic.
"My wife bought this ticket," Damian whispered, his voice cracking. "She was running away from me the night she died. And the man she was running away with... had a limp in his left leg."
