Chapter 3 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
The mansion was completely unrecognizable in the red emergency lighting.
The beautiful, silent estate I had cleaned for a year now felt like a hunting ground. Long shadows stretched across the marble floors. The distant sound of shouting echoed from the servant’s quarters.
Matteo moved with terrifying efficiency. He kept his body positioned between me and the open windows, his weapon drawn.
My leg throbbed with every step, the cut burning against my stocking, but the adrenaline masked the worst of the pain.
"The west wing is supposed to be sealed at night," Matteo whispered as we approached the heavy double doors of the family corridors.
"Andrew had the override codes," I reminded him quietly.
Matteo cursed under his breath. He pressed his hand against the fingerprint scanner. It beeped green.
The doors slid open.
We rushed down the carpeted hallway toward Leo's bedroom. It was eerily quiet. The two armed guards who were supposed to be posted outside the child's door were gone.
Not dead on the floor. Just gone.
"They abandoned post," Matteo realized, his voice dangerously low.
He kicked Leo's bedroom door open and swept the room with his gun.
"Leo!" Matteo called out.
The bed was empty. The blankets were tossed aside.
My stomach plummeted. I had only interacted with Leo a few times—always from a distance, bringing him a snack or picking up his toys. But the thought of a six-year-old taken by monsters made my chest physically ache.
Matteo stopped in the center of the room, his chest heaving. The unbreakable boss was fracturing.
Then, I heard it.
A tiny, muffled sniffle.
I stepped toward the massive oak wardrobe in the corner of the room. I knelt down, ignoring the sharp spike of pain in my injured leg.
"Leo?" I whispered. "It's Sophie. The maid. Your dad is here."
The wooden door cracked open.
Two terrified dark eyes peered out. Leo was clutching his knees to his chest, wearing his superhero pajamas.
Matteo dropped his gun and fell to his knees, pulling his son into a desperate, crushing hug.
"I've got you, piccolo," Matteo murmured into the boy's hair. "I've got you."
Leo was trembling violently. He looked over his father's shoulder at me.
"The guards left," Leo whispered. "They said Uncle Andrew told them to go outside. But then another man came in."
Matteo pulled back, holding Leo by the shoulders. "A man came in here? Did he hurt you?"
Leo shook his head. "No. He was looking for something in my toy box. But he didn't find it. Because I hid it."
"What did you hide, Leo?" I asked gently.
Leo reached into his pajama pocket.
He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. A child's drawing done in bright crayons.
He handed it to his father.
Matteo unfolded it under the red emergency light. I leaned in to look.
It was a drawing of a house. But not just any house. It was a precise, detailed map of the Vescari estate. And at the bottom, drawn in thick black crayon, was a squiggly line leading out from the basement.
"A tunnel," Matteo breathed. "He drew the old prohibition tunnel."
"I saw Uncle Andrew drawing it on a real map yesterday," Leo explained innocently. "He gave the real map to a man with a scar on his neck. So I drew my own to remember where the secret door was!"
My blood ran cold.
Andrew hadn't just been blackmailed. He had handed over the exact architectural blueprints of the estate's only hidden escape route.
But why did the man with the scar come looking for a child's drawing in a toy box?
Matteo flipped the drawing over.
There, written in elegant, feminine handwriting, was a list of bank account numbers.
"This isn't just Leo's drawing paper," Matteo said, his voice dropping. "This is a piece of stationary from my wife's old desk."
I stared at the numbers. "What are those?"
"Offshore accounts," Matteo said. "Untraceable money."
He looked up at me, the betrayal hitting him in waves.
"Andrew didn't sell me out because his family was threatened," Matteo realized, a bitter reversal tearing through everything he believed. "Andrew was paid. Millions. He sold the map to the house, took the envelope, and staged the blackmail with the gold watch to make himself look like a victim."
"But Andrew is dead," I pointed out. "The sniper shot him."
"Because he was a loose end," Matteo said grimly.
He stood up, pulling Leo into his arms.
"We can't stay here," Matteo said. "If they have the map to the tunnels, they are already under the house."
Before we could move toward the door, heavy, booted footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.
Not one man. Dozens.
We were trapped.
Matteo looked around the room, then at the massive walk-in closet.
"In there. Now," he ordered.
We rushed into the dark closet, hiding behind rows of heavy winter coats.
The bedroom door burst open. Flashlights swept the room.
I pulled a heavy wool coat around Leo to shield him from the cold and hide him in the shadows.
But as my hand slipped into the pocket of the coat to pull it tighter, my fingers brushed against something hard and metallic.
I pulled it out quietly.
May you like
It was a diamond bracelet.
And I recognized it instantly. Because I had seen the head of security's wife wearing it at a staff holiday party last year.
