Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Child's Drawing
At six the next morning, I found Clara in the kitchen making pancakes.
The sight was so ordinary that it almost offended me.
My son had identified a possible murderer, my brother had sent me a suspicious message, and the woman I had hired to watch Matteo appeared to be keeping secrets of her own.
Meanwhile, she was flipping pancakes.
“Where did you learn my name?” I asked.
Clara didn't turn around.
“Your staff uses it when they think you can't hear.”
“Don't insult my intelligence.”
“I wouldn't dream of it.”
She placed a pancake on a plate.
“Matteo wants breakfast in the garden. He said the kitchen makes him remember when his mother used to cook.”
My anger faltered.
“Since when does he tell you things like that?”
“Since someone started asking him questions without demanding answers.”
She carried the plate past me.
I followed her through the glass doors into the garden, where Matteo sat beneath the old oak tree.
A sketchbook lay open on his lap.
He was drawing.
I stopped walking.
Before the accident, Matteo had loved drawing. He drew dinosaurs, airplanes, soldiers, and elaborate maps of imaginary kingdoms. After the explosion, he stopped touching his pencils.
I had bought him expensive art sets, hired a private instructor, and ordered a custom drawing table.
None of it had worked.
Now he was holding a pencil again.
Clara lowered the breakfast tray beside him.
“Your father's here,” she said.
Matteo immediately stopped drawing.
His fingers tightened around the pencil.
I wanted to tell him to continue. I wanted to tell him I was happy to see him drawing.
Instead, I stood there like a man who had forgotten how to speak.
Clara gave me a look that told me to stop making the moment about myself.
Then she moved away to water the flowers.
I sat in the chair opposite my son.
“What are you drawing?”
He covered the page.
I felt the old instinct to demand an answer rise inside me.
I swallowed it.
“It's okay. You don't have to show me.”
His eyes flicked toward mine.
Slowly, he turned the sketchbook around.
The drawing showed a black vehicle, a man beside its rear door, and a large hand reaching toward the window.
The man had no face.
But his right hand was covered in dark pencil strokes.
“What is that?” I asked.
Matteo's mouth tightened.
“The ring.”
I leaned forward.
“Can you draw the ring?”
He nodded.
I watched him sketch a thick band around the man's finger. Then he added something on its surface.
A small eagle.
My stomach twisted.
The Rossi family ring featured an eagle clutching a broken sword. My father had commissioned three identical rings decades earlier. One belonged to me. One had belonged to my father. The third had been given to Luca on his twenty-first birthday.
Every member of our inner circle knew that symbol.
“Matteo,” I said carefully, “did you see this person before the explosion?”
He pressed the pencil against the paper until the tip snapped.
I immediately stopped talking.
“That's enough,” I said. “You don't have to do this now.”
He stared at the broken pencil.
Then he whispered, “He told Mommy you wouldn't listen.”
The garden seemed to tilt beneath me.
“What did he say?”
Matteo's breathing became shallow.
“He said Daddy never listens.”
I sat completely still.
“Did you hear the man speaking to Mommy?”
He nodded.
“What else did he say?”
Matteo's gaze went distant, as if the garden had disappeared and he was trapped inside the SUV again.
“He told her to get out.”
A chill crawled up my spine.
“Who did?”
“The man.”
“Did your mother get out?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Matteo started crying.
“Because she said she wouldn't leave me.”
I moved closer, but he shrank back.
The movement cut deeper than any insult.
I stopped immediately.
“I'm sorry,” I whispered.
He stared at me, bewildered, as if fathers in our family didn't apologize.
Clara returned with a glass of water.
“That's enough for today.”
I almost objected.
Instead, I stood.
As she wheeled Matteo toward the house, I noticed something tucked beneath his sketchbook.
A photograph.
I picked it up after they were gone.
It showed Isabella sitting in the garden six months before her death. She was smiling, one hand resting on Matteo's shoulder.
But it wasn't Isabella that caught my attention.
In the background, near the garden gate, stood a man in a dark suit.
His face was partially obscured.
I recognized the silver watch on his wrist.
Anton, my head of security, wore the same model.
I turned the photograph over.
On the back, in Isabella's handwriting, were seven words.
If anything happens, look beneath the house.
For fourteen months, I had searched for the truth everywhere.
In police reports.
In surveillance footage.
In the names of rival families.
I had never thought to look inside my own home.
That afternoon, I ordered the estate's architectural plans and sealed off the basement.
Then I called Anton.
“Do you remember where you were the night my wife died?”
He answered too quickly.
“Of course, sir. I was on security duty.”
“Where?”
“At the east gate.”
I glanced at the photograph.
“Interesting.”
Silence.
Then Anton said, “Sir, is something wrong?”
I examined the man standing behind Isabella.
“Not yet.”
I ended the call.
At the bottom of the photograph, beneath Isabella's note, was a faint mark that I hadn't noticed before.
A set of three numbers.
17-04-09.
I recognized the format immediately.
It wasn't a date.
It was the combination to the old wine cellar beneath my father's mansion.
May you like
A cellar that had been sealed since his death.
And a cellar that, according to the architect's original plans, contained a second door no one had mentioned in years.
