Chapter 5 - The Locked NurseryWe were nine minutes from the airport when Roman’s phone rang.
He answered immediately.
“What?”
His security chief’s deputy was shouting.
I could hear it from the passenger seat.
Roman’s face drained of color.
“Where is Leo?”
A pause.
Then he roared:
“WHERE IS MY SON?”
The driver accelerated before Roman gave the order.
My pulse hammered.
“What happened?”
Roman pressed the phone against his ear.
“Elena found the east service door open.”
“And Leo?”
“They can’t find him.”
The world narrowed.
The gala.
Glass.
Blood.
Leo’s dinosaur.
No.
Roman barked orders with terrifying precision.
“Lock the perimeter. Nobody enters or leaves. Search every vehicle. Check the lake. Call Marcus back from the airport.”
He hung up and immediately called another number.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
His hands shook.
I had never seen Roman’s hands shake.
“He could be hiding,” I said.
Roman stared straight ahead.
“He hides in three places.”
“They checked?”
“Two.”
“What’s the third?”
“My room.”
He called Elena.
She answered breathlessly.
“No.”
Roman closed his eyes.
“He isn’t there?”
“Roman, we’ve checked.”
I heard crying behind her.
A housekeeper.
Roman lowered the phone.
For the first time since I had met him, the most powerful man in every room looked helpless.
That frightened me more than his anger.
Then I remembered something.
“Pickles.”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“His dinosaur.”
Roman frowned.
“He takes it everywhere.”
“He left it in my room this morning.”
Roman stared.
“He came in before breakfast to get it. I told him he could keep borrowing it.”
I grabbed Roman’s phone.
“Call Elena.”
He did.
“Check Nora’s room.”
Seconds crawled.
Then Elena returned.
“The dinosaur is gone.”
Roman’s eyes sharpened.
“So he was upstairs.”
I closed mine.
Think.
Six-year-old.
Scared.
Stranger enters house.
Where does a child go?
“Does he have a safe place?”
“The security room.”
“No. A place he thinks is safe.”
Roman hesitated.
Then turned toward me.
“His mother’s nursery.”
“His mother?”
Roman looked away.
“Leo’s room when he was a baby. We never changed it.”
“Where?”
“West wing.”
He called the estate.
“Check the old nursery.”
A minute later, Elena’s voice broke.
“The door is locked.”
Roman sat forward.
“Break it.”
“They’re trying.”
We reached the estate in eleven minutes.
Roman was out of the SUV before it fully stopped.
I followed.
My side screamed.
I didn’t care.
Security flooded the west corridor.
A heavy white door stood at the end.
Two guards were working at the lock.
Roman shoved past them.
“Move.”
He kicked beside the latch.
Once.
Twice.
The frame splintered.
The door flew inward.
The nursery looked untouched by time.
Pale blue walls.
Wooden crib.
Clouds painted across the ceiling.
And in the corner, behind an overturned rocking chair, crouched Leo.
“Papa!”
Roman crossed the room in two strides.
Leo launched himself into his arms.
Roman dropped to his knees and held him so tightly that the child squeaked.
“You’re okay.”
“I hid.”
“I know.”
“The bad lady came.”
Everything stopped.
Roman pulled back.
“What lady?”
Leo pointed toward the closet.
“She said you sent her.”
Roman rose slowly.
A guard opened the closet.
Empty.
Window open.
Curtains moving in the September wind.
“She climbed out?” I asked.
Leo nodded.
“She wanted Daddy’s papers.”
Roman’s eyes sharpened.
“What papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“She asked you?”
“She asked where you keep Grandpa’s box.”
Roman went still.
Elena crossed herself.
“What box?”
Roman looked toward an antique wooden chest beneath the window.
Leo pointed.
“That one.”
Roman opened it.
Empty.
“Was something inside?”
Roman nodded slowly.
“My father’s private journals.”
My stomach tightened.
Victor wasn’t simply destroying evidence.
He was collecting it.
Roman carried Leo downstairs himself.
The police arrived.
Then Marcus.
Then, two hours later, detectives found the intruder’s abandoned car five miles away.
It belonged to Cynthia Hale.
But Cynthia wasn’t inside.
The next morning, a body was discovered near the river.
For several terrifying hours we believed it was hers.
It wasn’t.
The dead woman had Cynthia’s coat, Cynthia’s purse, and Cynthia’s identification.
But her fingerprints belonged to a woman named Rebecca Dunn.
A former employee of Moretti Construction.
Someone was manufacturing a death.
“Why?” I asked.
Marcus spread photographs across Roman’s study.
“To make us stop looking for Cynthia.”
“So she’s alive.”
“Almost certainly.”
“And Victor?”
Roman stared through the window.
“He attended a board meeting this morning.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“He knows we have evidence.”
“He knows we suspect something.”
“And you just let him go to work?”
Roman turned.
“I want him comfortable.”
“You want the man who may have killed my father comfortable?”
“I want him careless.”
I stepped closer.
“That sounds very convenient for you.”
His eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
“It means this started inside your family.”
“I’m aware.”
“My father went to your father for help and died.”
“My father died six months later.”
That stopped me.
“What?”
“Car accident.”
I had known Vittorio Moretti died young.
I hadn’t known when.
Roman continued.
“Brake failure. Mountain road.”
My anger shifted.
“You think that was Victor too?”
“I think I stopped believing in coincidences yesterday.”
We stood several feet apart.
Two children of dead fathers.
Sixteen years apart from the truth.
Suddenly Roman wasn’t the billionaire and I wasn’t the waitress.
We were simply two people discovering that grief had been manipulated.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded once.
“So am I.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard my father’s recorded voice.
If Nora ever sees this…
At two in the morning, I went downstairs.
Roman was in the kitchen.
Of course he was.
He sat at the table with a glass of water and a stack of documents.
“No whiskey?” I asked.
He looked up.
“You already judged me once.”
“I judged the timing.”
I sat across from him.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Same.”
Silence.
Then I asked the question I had avoided.
“What happened to Leo’s mother?”
Roman’s eyes dropped.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“She died.”
“I guessed that.”
“After Leo was born.”
His voice became quieter.
“Complications. Internal bleeding.”
My heart tightened.
“I’m sorry.”
“We knew something was wrong. The hospital kept telling me everything was under control.”
He stared at his hands.
“By the time I stopped listening and demanded they transfer her, it was too late.”
Suddenly I understood.
His control.
His impatience.
The way he treated every risk like an enemy that could be defeated if he moved quickly enough.
“You couldn’t save her.”
“No.”
“So now you try to save everyone.”
His eyes lifted.
“That sounds ridiculous.”
“It sounds exhausting.”
A faint smile.
“It is.”
We sat there while rain whispered against the windows.
Then Roman said, “I knew who you were before you woke up.”
I frowned.
“At the hospital?”
“When they gave me your name, I recognized Blake.”
“Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
“I wasn’t certain.”
He rubbed his thumb over the edge of a document.
“And because seeing you made me remember your father.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Well enough to know he loved you.”
My throat tightened.
Roman continued.
“He used to keep your school picture in his toolbox.”
I laughed through sudden tears.
“The terrible one with the missing front tooth?”
“That’s the one.”
“Oh God.”
“He showed it to everyone.”
“That sounds like him.”
I wiped my cheek.
Roman reached across the table.
Then stopped before touching me.
He withdrew his hand.
The gesture affected me more than if he had completed it.
“Nora.”
“What?”
“If Victor killed your father…”
His voice hardened.
“…I will help you prove it.”
“Not because you owe him?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He looked directly at me.
“Because nobody should spend sixteen years believing a lie about someone they loved.”
Something passed between us.
Quiet.
Dangerous.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Trust.
And trust, I was beginning to understand, frightened Roman Moretti more than bullets.
A floorboard creaked.
Leo stood in the doorway hugging Pickles.
“Bad dream.”
Roman immediately pushed back his chair.
Leo shook his head.
“I want Nora.”
Roman stopped.
I did too.
Leo shuffled toward me.
I opened my good arm.
He climbed into my lap carefully.
Within minutes, his breathing slowed.
Roman watched us.
“You have some kind of magic.”
“No.”
I looked down at Leo.
“He’s just scared.”
“So are most people.”
“Children admit it.”
Roman smiled faintly.
Then my phone vibrated on the table.
Another anonymous message.
This one contained a photograph.
Roman picked it up before I could.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He turned the screen.
The photograph showed my father.
Alive.
Standing outside Bellamy House sixteen years ago.
Beside him was Vittorio Moretti.
And a third man.
Victor.
On the back of the scanned photograph was a handwritten sentence.
Michael trusted the wrong Moretti.
Then another message appeared.
Ask Roman what his father did the night Michael Blake died.
I looked across the table.
May you like
Roman’s face had gone pale.
And for the first time, he refused to meet my eyes.
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