Chapter 2 - The Voice Beneath the Floor
By midnight, the Moretti mansion had become a fortress.
Armed men sealed the gates. Security teams searched every corridor. Two veterinarians arrived through the servants' entrance and carried Bruno into the kitchen, where he lay on a blanket while one of them treated the wound in his shoulder.
The bullet had grazed him.
He would survive.
Sophie refused to leave him.
She sat beside his enormous head, stroking the fur between his ears while I watched the men moving through the cottage. Every time a door closed, she flinched.
“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For not believing you.”
She looked down at Bruno.
“You were tired, Mama.”
Five words.
That was all she offered me.
Somehow, they hurt more than an accusation ever could.
I had spent six nights believing my daughter was safely asleep while I polished silver, changed linens, and prepared the mansion for its annual dinner. I had passed out desserts to men whose names appeared in newspaper reports about shootings and disappearances. I had smiled at their wives and ignored their whispered conversations.
All while someone entered my child's room.
Dante appeared in the doorway.
His shirt was stained with blood that wasn't his, and a fresh cut crossed his cheek. He had removed his pistol belt, but the weapon remained in his hand.
“Sophie,” he said, lowering himself to one knee. “May I ask you something?”
She pressed closer to Bruno.
“Will you be angry if I say the wrong thing?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
Dante looked at me before answering.
“I promise.”
Sophie considered him for a moment.
“Why did you say your brother was dead?”
His mouth tightened.
“Because I saw him die.”
“Did you see his face?”
The question struck him harder than any blow.
“What?”
“When the man died. Did you see his face?”
Dante didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, “No. The explosion destroyed most of the car.”
“Maybe you buried the wrong man.”
A strange silence settled over the room.
Dante slowly rose.
“Where did she learn to talk like that?” he asked me.
“She talks like a five-year-old.”
“Not when she asks questions like that.”
He turned toward the security men.
“Bring Victor to the library.”
Victor Shaw had managed the Moretti estate for eleven years. He was a tall, silver-haired man who dressed with military precision and carried a thin leather notebook everywhere. He knew every employee, every lock, every alarm, and every secret room in the mansion.
He had hired me to clean the east wing.
He had arranged Sophie's cottage.
And when I had asked why the window locks were so old, he had assured me that no one could enter the property without setting off an alarm.
I had believed him.
A minute later, Victor entered the kitchen.
“Mr. Moretti, you've summoned me?”
“Who maintains the old passage behind the walnut wall?”
Victor's expression barely shifted.
“No one. That corridor was sealed before my time.”
“You're lying.”
Victor glanced toward the dog.
“Is Bruno all right?”
“Don't look at the dog. Look at me.”
The older man obeyed.
Dante stepped closer.
“My brother's voice came through that passage tonight. Someone opened the inner bolt. The electricity failed, and a gunman fired into the corridor.”
Victor swallowed.
“That's impossible.”
“Everyone keeps using that word tonight.”
Dante raised his phone and played a recording captured by a security microphone near the hidden entrance.
The stranger's voice filled the kitchen.
Your mother knows I'm alive.
Victor's hand tightened around his notebook.
Only for a second.
But Dante saw it.
“So,” Dante said softly, “you recognize the voice.”
Victor forced a smile.
“I've worked here for years. I've heard your brother's voice in old recordings.”
“Then you'll have no difficulty identifying it.”
“Of course not.”
Dante leaned close enough that only Victor could hear his next words.
“If you're lying to me, I'll find out.”
Victor nodded.
Then his gaze slipped past Dante and landed on Sophie.
Something cold moved across his face.
Not anger.
Recognition.
I saw it, and my stomach tightened.
“Do you know my daughter?” I asked.
Victor turned toward me with a courteous smile.
“Of course. Everyone on the estate knows little Sophie.”
“Then why are you looking at her like that?”
His smile disappeared.
Dante stepped between us.
“Leave.”
Victor bowed and walked out.
As he passed the doorway, Sophie suddenly stood.
“That's him.”
Everyone froze.
Dante turned.
“Who?”
“The man who knocks.”
Victor stopped walking.
My hands went numb.
“Are you certain?” Dante asked.
Sophie nodded, then hesitated.
“But he looked different.”
“How?”
“He had a hat tonight. And his coat was wet. But he walks the same way.”
Victor glanced back.
“Mr. Moretti, she's frightened. Children often confuse faces after a traumatic event.”
“Then why did you stop walking?” Dante asked.
Victor said nothing.
Dante gestured to two guards.
“Take him to the security office. Don't touch him. Don't threaten him. Just make sure he stays where I can find him.”
Victor's expression hardened.
“You cannot detain me without cause.”
“I can do whatever I like in my own house.”
“Not anymore,” Victor replied.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
Dante stared at him.
Victor's hand darted into his jacket.
Three guards drew their guns.
But he didn't reach for a weapon.
He pulled out a small brass key.
He held it up between two fingers.
“You need to see what's in the nursery.”
The nursery had been closed for seven years.
It belonged to Nico.
Dante had once told me his younger brother was wild, brilliant, and impossible to control. After a car explosion on a country road, Nico had been declared dead. His funeral had lasted twelve minutes. There had been no open casket, no body for the family to see, and no official explanation beyond an identification made from personal effects.
Dante had never discussed him again.
Now he took the key from Victor's hand.
We followed him upstairs.
At the end of the second-floor corridor stood a white door with a brass handle. Dust covered the frame. A faded child's drawing had been pinned beneath the glass: two boys standing beside a black dog.
Dante stared at the drawing for a long moment.
Then he unlocked the nursery.
Inside, the room smelled of old paper and cedar. Shelves of toy cars lined the walls. A wooden horse sat beneath a window. Everything had been preserved exactly as it had been left seven years earlier.
Except for one thing.
A small wooden train lay in the center of the floor.
It was new.
Beside it sat a folded piece of paper.
Dante picked it up.
The note contained a single sentence written in black ink.
Ask the boy who was buried in my name.
Beneath it was a date.
October 13.
Today's date.
Dante's grip tightened until the paper crumpled.
“Who brought this here?” he demanded.
No one answered.
Sophie slipped away from my side and approached the toy train.
“That's not a new toy,” she said.
Dante crouched beside her.
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw it before.”
“When?”
She looked toward the bedroom window.
“The man brought it the first night.”
My blood turned cold.
“You never told me that.”
“You were working.”
She touched the train's little metal roof.
“There was something inside it. The man took it out and left the train.”
Dante examined the toy.
A narrow seam ran beneath the carriage. He pressed it, and a tiny compartment sprang open.
Inside lay a silver ring.
Dante's face went white.
I recognized the ring from the photographs on his office desk. It bore the Moretti family crest, a wolf carved into a circle of black stone.
But this ring was stained with dried brown blood.
Dante turned it over.
Engraved inside were two initials.
N.M.
He staggered back a step.
“My brother wore this the night he died.”
A floorboard creaked behind us.
I spun around.
Victor was gone.
One of the guards cursed and rushed toward the corridor.
Dante grabbed his phone.
“Lock down the estate. Find Victor Shaw.”
Then he looked at the open compartment in the toy train.
“There was another object in here,” he murmured.
“How do you know?” I asked.
He pointed to a strip of velvet lining.
A second item had recently been removed, leaving a clean impression in the dust.
Whatever had been hidden beside Nico's ring was gone.
And whoever took it had used my daughter to reach the nursery.
Sophie tugged my hand.
“Mama?”
I knelt beside her.
“What is it?”
She looked directly at Dante.
“The man told me to give you a message.”
Dante crouched.
“What message?”
Sophie swallowed.
“He said you should stop looking for Uncle Nico.”
“Why?”
“Because the next time he comes through the wall, he won't come alone.”
From somewhere beneath the nursery floor came the slow, deliberate sound of metal striking stone.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Then a man's voice rose through the floorboards.
“Dante? Open the door.”
Dante raised his weapon.
May you like
The voice laughed.
“It's me, little brother.”
