Chapter 4 - THE CHILD’S DRAWING IN THE FIRE
The blast threw us backward.
The reinforced window shattered, raining thick safety glass across the concrete floor. The heat was instantaneous, a suffocating wave that sucked the oxygen right out of the room.
“Grace! Emily!” Luca shouted, scrambling to his feet through the thick black smoke.
“We’re okay!” I yelled, pulling Grace up by her arm.
The alarms were screaming. The sprinkler system kicked on, spraying a pathetic drizzle of dirty water over the growing inferno. The woman in the courtyard had targeted the facility’s main oxygen supply lines. The fire was spreading through the walls at a terrifying speed.
“We have to move!” Michael Romano yelled from the hallway, his face smeared with soot.
We ran toward the stairwell, but a massive section of the ceiling collapsed, blocking our path with a wall of flaming debris.
“The van!” Grace cried, coughing violently into her sleeve. “They took Sofia in the van!”
“I know,” Luca snarled, his eyes scanning the burning corridor. “But we can’t save her if we burn to death.”
I looked around desperately. I was a nurse; I was used to high-stress environments, but this was a nightmare. My eyes caught a red emergency sign glowing faintly through the smoke.
“The service elevator!” I pointed down the opposite hall. “Hospitals use them for laundry and medical waste. They have independent fire-shafts!”
We sprinted through the blinding smoke. The heat was blistering my skin. Luca kicked the service door open. The elevator was disabled, but the heavy metal doors to the shaft were exposed.
Luca and Michael wedged their fingers into the seam and pulled with every ounce of adrenaline in their bodies. The doors groaned, then slid apart, revealing a dark, concrete drop.
“There’s a maintenance ladder,” Michael coughed, pointing into the shaft.
“Go! Go!” Luca ordered.
We climbed down three stories in absolute darkness, the roar of the fire vibrating through the concrete walls. When we reached the basement level, Michael pried the doors open, and we tumbled out into the cold, damp loading dock.
We were out.
We stumbled into the dark woods behind the facility, gasping for fresh air. Sirens wailed in the distance as local fire departments rushed toward the blazing asylum.
Luca leaned against a tree, his chest heaving. He looked back at the burning building. He had found his daughter’s prison, only to watch her be ripped away again.
“They knew we were coming,” Luca said, his voice deadly quiet. “Warren sent a message to the facility the moment Michael’s men hit my house.”
Grace fell to her knees, sobbing, clutching her mother’s silver rosary tightly against her chest. “We lost her. We lost her again.”
I knelt beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. As I did, I noticed something sticking out of the small pocket of her jacket.
“Grace, what is that?”
She looked down, confused. She pulled it out.
It was a crumpled piece of paper. It hadn’t been in her pocket when we left Chicago.
She unfolded it, her hands shaking.
It wasn’t a note. It was a child’s drawing.
Crayon on cheap hospital paper. A crude sketch of a tall man holding hands with a little girl. They were standing in front of a blue house with a yellow door.
At the bottom, written in messy, uneven letters:
For Mommy. Love, Leo.
I stared at it. “Who is Leo?”
Grace shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know. I found this tucked under the rosary on Sofia’s bed. I grabbed it without thinking.”
Luca snatched the drawing. He stared at the blue house. His face went completely pale.
“Luca?” I asked. “Do you know that house?”
He didn’t answer me. He looked at Michael.
“Michael,” Luca whispered, his voice trembling. “When Celeste was married to you… did she ever have a child?”
Michael frowned, confused by the sudden question. “No. We tried, but the doctors said she couldn’t. Why?”
Luca turned the drawing around so Michael could see it.
“Because this blue house with the yellow door,” Luca said, “is Celeste’s private summer cabin in Wisconsin. I bought it for her three years ago.”
The woods went entirely silent.
I did the mental math in my head. Sofia had been locked away for seven years. If this drawing was made by a child named Leo, for his "Mommy"…
“Sofia didn’t just disappear seven years ago,” I said, the horrifying realization washing over me. “She was pregnant.”
Grace gasped.
“Warren didn’t just steal your daughter, Luca,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “He stole your grandson. And he gave him to Celeste to raise.”
Luca’s eyes turned into black, empty voids. The rage inside him was no longer hot. It was absolute, freezing absolute zero.
He pulled out his satellite phone and dialed his security chief back in Chicago.
“Lock down the estate,” Luca ordered. “Nobody leaves. Not my mother. Not the guards.”
A pause.
“And tie Celeste to a chair.”
Luca hung up the phone. He looked at the burning hospital, then at the child’s drawing in his hand.
“We’re going to Wisconsin,” Luca said.
Before we could take a single step toward the extraction point, a spotlight cut through the dark woods, blinding us.
The heavy, mechanical click of a dozen assault rifles cocking echoed through the trees.
“Nobody is going anywhere,” a voice called out from the darkness.
Stepping into the beam of light was a man in a pristine, tailored suit.
He wasn’t a mercenary. He wasn’t a doctor.
He was Thomas Bennett. Maria’s father.
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And he was holding a gun pointed directly at Grace’s head.
TITLE: THE GRANDFATHER WHO DIED TWICE
