Chapter 3 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
"I killed him five years ago."
The words sent a violent shiver down my spine. I stood frozen at the edge of the hidden doorway, my injured hand clutching Leo’s small fingers.
The man on the screen—the man Vanessa had secretly married, the man who had just spoken to a six-year-old boy in the garden—was supposed to be a corpse.
"Go, Emily," Luca barked, his eyes never leaving the monitor. "Now."
I didn't hesitate again. I pulled Leo into the narrow, dimly lit corridor that connected the study to Luca’s private suite. The heavy bookshelf swung shut behind us, plunging us into silence. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
We reached the master suite, and I immediately threw the deadbolts on the heavy oak doors. The room was massive, smelling of cedar and expensive cologne.
"Are we playing hide and seek?" Leo asked, climbing onto the edge of the massive king-sized bed. He didn't seem scared, just confused.
"Yes," I lied, forcing a smile despite the throbbing pain in my swollen fingers. "A very quiet game. We have to be as silent as mice."
I walked over to the window, peering through the heavy velvet curtains. Down below, the grounds of the estate were suddenly swarming with movement. Men in dark suits—Luca’s personal security—were unrolling across the lawn with flashlights, checking the perimeter. The estate was going into full lockdown.
My mind raced. Julian Rossi. That was the name I had heard whispered among the older staff when I first started working here. A rival family. A blood feud that ended when Luca took control of the empire.
If Julian was alive, why did he marry Vanessa? And why had Vanessa agreed to marry Luca if she was already tied to his greatest enemy?
I paced the floor, my mind replaying the afternoon in Vanessa’s bedroom. The slammed drawer. The cruel smile. The way she ordered me to clean up her broken pearls at dinner, desperate to reassert her dominance.
Wait.
I stopped pacing.
Before Vanessa had slammed the drawer on my hand, before I found the photograph in the black velvet box... I had been emptying her wastebasket.
My left hand went to the deep pocket of my apron. My fingers brushed against a crumpled piece of paper I had stuffed there when the argument began. I had completely forgotten about it in the shock of the injury.
I pulled it out.
It wasn't a receipt or a discarded note.
It was a child's drawing.
I smoothed the wrinkled paper on the bedside table, turning on a small reading lamp. It was drawn in bright, aggressive crayons. It showed a large, black house. Standing in front of the house was a tall stick figure of a man with an angry, red face.
But it was what was drawn inside the house that made my breath catch.
In a small square window near the top of the black house, a tiny boy was drawn. He was crying. Thick blue crayon tears fell from his eyes. And written in clumsy, childish handwriting at the bottom of the page were four words:
Mommy, come get me.
"What's that?" Leo asked, leaning over the edge of the bed to look.
"Just a picture," I whispered, my hands trembling as I studied the drawing.
"That's Vanessa's little boy," Leo said simply, swinging his legs.
I froze. I turned to look at the six-year-old. "What did you say, Leo?"
"Vanessa's little boy," Leo repeated, pointing a small finger at the crying child in the window. "I saw her looking at it in the kitchen yesterday. She was crying. I asked her who it was, and she told me to go away. She said he lives in the dark."
Vanessa has a son.
The reversal flipped everything I thought I knew upside down. Vanessa wasn't just a gold-digging, cruel fiancée cheating on a mafia boss. She was a mother. A mother whose child was being held in "the dark."
And Julian Rossi—the man who had returned from the dead, the man she married three months ago—was the one holding him. Julian hadn't just seduced her; he had trapped her. He was forcing her to infiltrate Luca’s life, using her own child as leverage.
Suddenly, a loud, sharp knock struck the heavy oak doors of the bedroom.
I jumped, snatching the drawing off the table.
"Emily, open the door," a voice demanded.
It wasn't Luca.
It was Anthony Mercer. Luca’s personal attorney. The man who had been in Vanessa’s bedroom this afternoon. The man who had lied about being in Boston.
"Mr. Moretti told me to lock the door," I called out, keeping my voice as steady as possible. "I'm not opening it."
"Emily, listen to me," Anthony’s voice came through the thick wood, hushed and frantic. "Luca is occupied with security. I know what you found today. I know about the photograph."
I didn't answer. I backed away from the door, pushing Leo gently behind my legs.
"I'm trying to save Luca's life," Anthony pleaded through the door. "Julian Rossi is going to burn this entire family to the ground by Saturday. If you want to protect that little boy in there, you need to let me in."
I looked down at the child's drawing in my hand.
I walked quietly to the door and pressed my ear against the wood. "Why were you in her bedroom, Mr. Mercer?"
A long silence stretched in the hallway.
"Because I wasn't delivering legal documents," Anthony finally whispered. "I was delivering a ransom demand. If Vanessa doesn't marry Luca this Saturday... Julian is going to kill her son."
The floorboards creaked right outside the door. But it wasn't Anthony shifting his weight.
May you like
It was the sound of a woman's high heels.
"She wasn't supposed to find that drawing, Anthony," Vanessa's voice echoed through the hallway, cold and hollow. "And neither were you, Emily. Open the door. Or I will have the guards break it down."
