Chapter 3 - THE EMPTY ROOM
Adrian read the text message. He didn't gasp. He didn't shout.
The color drained from his face, leaving behind a cold, terrifying mask of pure violence. He pocketed my phone, grabbed the photograph, and looked at me.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re leaving. Now.”
We didn't go back through the main house. Adrian led me through the service corridors, bypassing the kitchens and exiting through the loading dock. His black SUV was waiting, the engine already running, his trusted driver gripping the wheel.
Adrian opened the back door for me. I climbed in, clutching my injured shoulder. He slid in beside me and slammed the door.
“St. Jude’s on 4th,” Adrian barked. “Run every red light.”
The tires screamed against the asphalt.
The ride was suffocating. I stared out the window as the streetlights blurred into streaks of yellow. My mind was spinning. Leo. The quiet, fiercely intelligent boy who struggled with math but could draw incredibly detailed portraits of the city skyline. He was Adrian’s nephew. The true heir to the Moretti empire.
“How did Vanessa know?” Adrian asked suddenly, breaking the heavy silence.
I turned to him. “Know about Leo?”
“She gave you the envelope. The money was to keep you quiet about Michael Ferris. But the photo... it was a warning. She knew you tutored at St. Jude’s. She knew you knew the boy.”
“I don't know how she found out,” I whispered, panic tightening my chest. “I never talked about my volunteer work at the estate. I keep my head down.”
“Michael Ferris,” Adrian muttered, staring at the partition separating us from the driver. “He vanished twelve years ago, the night Elias died. Now he’s back, walking through my home, handing my fiancée a picture of my dead brother's hidden son. Why?”
“Answer One, Open Two,” I murmured, quoting something my grandmother used to say when mysteries unraveled poorly.
Adrian looked at me, a flicker of dark agreement in his eyes.
The SUV violently swerved to the curb, throwing me against the plush leather seats. We were parked in front of the looming brick facade of St. Jude’s.
Adrian was out of the car before it fully stopped. I scrambled out after him.
We hammered on the heavy wooden doors. A minute later, Sister Margaret, the night supervisor, pulled it open. She looked exhausted, her gray hair escaping her sleeping cap.
“Grace?” she asked, confused. “What on earth are you doing here at this hour?”
“We need to see Leo,” I said, pushing past her into the dimly lit foyer. “Right now, Sister.”
“Leo?” She frowned, closing the door against the night chill. “Grace, you know the rules. Visiting hours—”
“Take me to his room,” Adrian commanded. His voice wasn't loud, but the sheer authority in it made Sister Margaret take a step back.
“I can't take you to his room, sir,” she stammered, clutching the collar of her robe.
“Why not?” I asked, panic rising.
“Because he’s not here.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
“What do you mean he’s not here?” Adrian stepped closer to her, his height intimidating in the narrow hallway.
“He was picked up,” Sister Margaret said, her voice shaking slightly. “About an hour ago.”
“By who?” I demanded.
“By his aunt. She had all the paperwork. Legal guardianship forms, signed by a judge. She said there was a family emergency and she needed to take him immediately.”
“What did she look like?” Adrian asked, his voice deathly quiet.
“Beautiful,” the sister said. “Tall. Red dress. Diamonds.”
Vanessa.
Adrian swore violently, turning away and running a hand over his face.
“Show me his room,” I said to the sister.
She hesitated, then nodded, leading us up the narrow, creaking stairs to the third floor. She unlocked a small door at the end of the hall.
The room was tiny. A single bed, a small desk, a wardrobe. It looked stripped bare.
I walked over to the desk. Leo was a meticulous child. He always kept his crayons lined up. Tonight, they were scattered across the floor, broken. He had fought. He hadn't wanted to go.
I knelt down, wincing as pain shot through my shoulder, and looked under the bed.
My fingers brushed against a piece of crumpled paper.
I pulled it out and smoothed it over the mattress. Adrian stepped up behind me.
It was a child’s drawing in heavy black crayon.
It depicted three figures. A small boy with dark hair. A tall man with a scar on his face—Michael Ferris. And a woman with bright red hair.
But it was what was drawn above them that made my blood run cold.
The woman in the drawing wasn't holding the boy’s hand. She was holding a gun, pointed directly at the tall man's back.
Adrian stared at the drawing. “She didn't hire Michael,” he whispered, a reversal of everything we believed hitting him in real-time. “Michael isn't blackmailing her.”
“No,” I said, tracing the crude crayon lines. “She's using Michael.”
I turned toward the open wardrobe to see if Leo had left anything else behind. On the top shelf, half-hidden in the shadows, sat an object that made Adrian let out a choked, ragged breath.
It was a heavy, worn, black leather coat.
“That’s impossible,” Adrian said, stumbling forward. His hands shook as he reached up and pulled the coat down. “This is Elias’s coat. He was wearing this the night his car went off the bridge. The police said it burned with the wreckage.”
He held the leather to his chest, the smell of old smoke and rain filling the small room.
As the coat shifted, something metallic fell out of the pocket and clattered against the hardwood floor.
I bent down and picked it up.
May you like
It was a delicate, diamond-encrusted rosary.
Vanessa’s rosary.
