Chapter 2 - The Face Alejandro Recognized
The first thing Alejandro saw when he could breathe again was a pink rabbit backpack.
The second was the little girl kneeling beside him.
The third nearly stopped his heart for an entirely different reason.
Her eyes.
Gray with a thin ring of green.
Exactly like Luca’s.
Alejandro’s younger brother had been dead for four years.
Yet for one impossible second, Alejandro was staring at Luca at age four.
“Who are you?” he rasped.
Emma’s lower lip trembled.
“Emma.”
“Emma what?”
Before she could answer, Elena burst into the study.
She saw Alejandro on the floor.
She saw the guards.
Then she saw Emma.
Every bit of color disappeared from her face.
“No.”
It was not relief.
It was horror.
Elena crossed the room and pulled Emma against her chest.
“I told you to stay downstairs.”
“He couldn’t breathe,” Emma said.
“I know.”
“I helped.”
“I know, baby.”
Elena’s voice broke.
Alejandro watched them.
The room was filling with people now.
His physician.
Tomas Bell, his security chief.
Two more guards.
Everyone talked at once.
Alejandro heard almost none of it.
He was still looking at Emma.
“Elena.”
She flinched.
He knew every employee in his home by face and file.
Elena Carter had been hired five months ago through a domestic staffing agency.
Widowed.
No criminal record.
One child listed as living with a relative outside the city.
That last detail now seemed very important.
“Why is your daughter living in my basement?”
Elena held Emma tighter.
“She had nowhere else to go.”
“That is not what your file says.”
“I know.”
Tomas interrupted.
“Boss, we need to move you.”
Alejandro’s eyes stayed on Elena.
“Lock the gates.”
Tomas nodded.
“No one leaves.”
Elena’s breathing changed.
Alejandro noticed.
“So you are afraid.”
“I’m afraid of many things.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
Emma looked up sharply.
“Mama, he’s not scary.”
One of the guards almost smiled.
Alejandro did not.
He had built an entire life around being frightening enough that nobody tried what someone had tried tonight.
A four-year-old apparently had not received the memo.
The physician examined him while Tomas removed the camera unit from the bookshelf.
“The footage should be local and mirrored,” Tomas said.
“Play it.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
The room fell quiet.
Tomas connected the storage device to a secure laptop.
The video opened.
Alejandro appeared on-screen twenty minutes earlier, entering the study alone.
He set a folder on the desk.
A staff member brought wine.
Normal.
The staff member left.
Three minutes passed.
Then the private side door opened.
A person entered wearing household service gloves and a dark jacket.
The camera angle caught only the back of the figure.
The person crossed to the desk, touched the wine, then disappeared through the side door.
Tomas froze the image.
“Zoom.”
The picture blurred.
But one detail remained visible.
A heavy silver ring on the person’s right hand.
The Moretti crest.
Only six living people were authorized to wear one.
Alejandro knew every name.
So did Tomas.
Emma tugged Elena’s sleeve.
“That’s the shiny ring man.”
Every adult in the room looked at her.
Elena went rigid.
Alejandro slowly sat upright.
“What did you say?”
Emma pointed at the screen.
“I saw him before.”
“When?”
Emma thought very hard.
“In the garden.”
Elena whispered, “Emma, stop.”
But Alejandro had already heard enough.
“What garden?”
“The little window garden.”
The basement window.
Emma continued.
“He looked in.”
“When?”
“Lots ago.”
A four-year-old’s calendar was useless.
But Elena’s face was not.
Alejandro turned toward her.
“You knew someone had seen her.”
Elena said nothing.
Tomas looked between them.
“Boss?”
Alejandro ignored him.
“Elena.”
His voice became very quiet.
“Who is Emma’s father?”
Elena closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, she looked like a woman standing at the edge of a cliff.
Then she said the name Alejandro had not heard inside his home in four years.
“Luca.”
Nobody moved.
Alejandro stared at the child who had just saved his life.
His brother’s child.
His niece.
Alive.
May you like
And hidden beneath his own house.
