Chapter 1
“Three sleepless nights? Your turn starts now.”
Sabine stared at the brass bell beside her.
I did not mean I was going to keep her awake for three nights.
That would make me no better than what I had just walked into.
But she did not know that yet.
Good.
Theo remained wrapped in a blanket against Leah’s shoulder, his wet hair flattened across his forehead. He was fighting sleep even now because somebody had taught his body that closing his eyes brought punishment.
That sight changed something inside me.
I crouched in front of him.
“Theo.”
His eyelids fluttered.
“You can sleep.”
He looked frightened.
“No bell?”
“No bell.”
“No water?”
“No.”
His small hand caught my lapel.
“Sabine says bad things happen if I sleep.”
I slowly turned toward her.
Sabine’s expression remained controlled.
Too controlled.
“Explain.”
“He wandered.”
“What?”
“Two nights ago. He got out of bed.”
Leah flinched.
I noticed.
“Where did he go?”
Sabine answered before the nanny could.
“Nowhere important.”
Wrong phrase.
I looked at Leah.
She dropped her eyes.
“Theo?”
My son was already half asleep.
Then he whispered:
“Red door.”
Sabine went pale.
There it was.
Not discipline.
Not some monstrous theory about teaching a toddler obedience.
A place.
“What red door?”
No one answered.
The mountain hotel had dozens of guest rooms.
No red doors.
Except one.
A service door on the sealed lower floor beneath the old library.
My father had kept that level closed since I was a teenager.
Sabine knew that.
Very few others did.
I stood.
“You kept him awake because he wandered near the lower floor.”
“No.”
“Then why did his answer scare you?”
Silence.
Leah started crying.
I looked at her.
“Talk.”
She whispered:
“He didn’t just see the door.”
Sabine closed her eyes.
Leah continued.
“He saw who came through it.”
The room changed.
I looked at my sleeping son.
May you like
Three nights of deliberate exhaustion had not been about teaching him anything.
Sabine had been trying to destroy the clarity of a witness who was only three years old.
