Chapter 3
Vittorio watched the recording twice.
Bianca and Marcus stood in the breakfast room after midnight.
Lucy’s empty chair visible behind them.
Marcus held the red map.
Bianca poured herself wine.
“Six minutes is enough?”
Marcus nodded.
“Caleb says more than enough.”
Vittorio paused the video.
“Caleb who?”
Emma shook her head.
“I only heard the first name.”
Marcus laughed.
“Half of Queens is named Caleb now?”
Vittorio looked at him.
“No.”
Only one Caleb mattered inside Romano territory.
Caleb Mercer.
Fifty-eight.
River captain.
Thirty years with the organization.
The man responsible for the east-side docks.
Vittorio resumed the recording.
Bianca:
“And Vittorio?”
Marcus:
“Still in council.”
Bianca smiled.
“What if Lucy talks?”
Marcus looked toward the child’s chair.
Then said:
“She’ll stop when you make talking expensive.”
Vittorio’s jaw tightened.
Emma lowered her eyes.
The video continued.
Bianca:
“She cries when I take breakfast.”
Marcus laughed.
“Then take lunch.”
Emma looked sick.
Lucy hid her face.
Vittorio stopped the video.
Marcus smiled.
“Out of context.”
“Which part?”
“The joke.”
Vittorio stared.
Marcus continued.
“Children skip meals.”
“All the time.”
Then:
“She’s still alive.”
The room changed.
Vittorio’s face became colder.
Marcus saw.
Still kept talking.
“What?”
“You want me to pretend missing pancakes is torture?”
Vittorio stepped closer.
“No.”
“I want you to keep explaining.”
Marcus’s smile faded.
Vittorio understood men like him.
Silence frightened them.
They filled it.
Marcus eventually did.
“Lucy wandered downstairs one night.”
There.
Vittorio waited.
“She saw me with the map.”
“And?”
“She asked questions.”
“So Bianca starved her.”
Marcus shrugged.
“She needed to forget.”
Lucy whispered:
“I didn’t.”
Everyone turned.
The little girl looked at her father.
Tears on her cheeks.
“Uncle Marcus used the red door.”
Vittorio crouched.
“What red door?”
Lucy pointed toward the far wall.
Behind the antique newspaper stand.
There was no visible door.
Not anymore.
Vittorio had the stand moved.
Behind it—
old wood.
Painted to match the paneling.
A narrow service door.
He had forgotten it existed.
His grandfather had used those passages decades earlier to move staff between the breakfast wing and river side of the estate.
The door opened onto stairs descending underground.
Marcus went pale.
Bianca whispered:
“No.”
Vittorio looked at her.
Then the staircase.
Emma said:
“I saw Marcus go down there twice.”
Vittorio’s expression hardened.
He called three guards.
“Go.”
Marcus shouted:
“Vittorio.”
The tone changed.
No mockery now.
“Don’t.”
That one word told him everything.
Vittorio looked down the dark staircase.
May you like
Whatever Marcus feared was not outside the estate.
It was already underneath it.
