Chapter 8 - Sophie’s Red Sketchbook
Sophie did not understand why four adults suddenly became interested in drawings she had made years earlier.
To her, the red sketchbook was not evidence.
It was simply where she stored things she wanted to remember.
The Eiffel Tower.
A bakery near their Paris apartment.
Her grandmother asleep in a chair.
A blue bicycle.
A dog she wanted but Camille refused to let her adopt because their building did not allow pets.
And apparently, a man across the street.
“Did you see him often?” Alessandro asked.
Sophie sat at the conference table swinging her legs.
Camille touched Alessandro’s arm.
“Careful.”
He nodded.
No interrogation.
No pressure.
Alessandro crouched beside Sophie.
“I like your drawings.”
“You didn’t look at all of them on the plane.”
“I was distracted.”
“By my mom’s picture?”
Camille closed her eyes.
Thomas Bellini almost smiled despite the tension.
“Yes,” Alessandro said. “By your mom’s picture.”
Sophie turned the page.
There were more street scenes.
In three of them appeared the same dark-coated figure.
Sometimes beside a café.
Sometimes near a parked car.
One drawing showed him holding an umbrella.
“What made you draw him?” Alessandro asked.
“He was always there.”
Camille’s face lost color.
“What do you mean always?”
Sophie looked at her mother.
“When we went to Grandma’s. When we went to the market.”
Camille stared.
“Sophie, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“I said the gray man was boring.”
Camille remembered.
Her daughter had been four.
At the time Sophie frequently invented names for strangers.
Red Hat Lady.
Loud Shoes Man.
Bread Grandpa.
Gray Man had sounded like another childish observation.
Now Camille felt sick.
“How long?” she whispered.
Sophie shrugged.
“He stopped coming after Grandma moved.”
That had been eighteen months ago.
Thomas Bellini examined the sketches.
“This man is taller than me.”
Alessandro looked at him.
“You can tell from a child’s drawing?”
“Look at the car.”
The figure stood beside what appeared to be a black sedan.
“If the proportions are even close, he’s six-foot-three or more.”
Matteo entered.
Alessandro handed him the sketchbook.
“Scan these.”
Camille immediately objected.
“No.”
Matteo stopped.
Camille looked at Alessandro.
“That book belongs to Sophie.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
Then he turned to the girl.
“Sophie, may Matteo take pictures of some pages?”
“Why?”
Alessandro considered how much truth a six-year-old should hear.
“Because you noticed something the adults missed.”
Sophie brightened.
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“Is it important?”
“Maybe.”
She thought about it.
“Okay. But not the page with Mom sleeping.”
Camille frowned.
“You drew me sleeping?”
Sophie closed the book protectively.
“No.”
For the first time that day, everyone laughed.
The moment mattered.
Alessandro realized his life had been without sounds like that.
Not laughter in clubs.
Not polite amusement at dinners.
The kind of laughter that made danger temporarily irrelevant.
Later, while Matteo digitized the approved pages, Bellini provided more information.
During the years Camille lived in Paris, Giancarlo had secretly assigned security to watch her.
Not to control her.
To protect Sophie.
“Who?” Alessandro asked.
“A man named Adrian Vale.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That was intentional. He worked outside the family.”
“Former military?”
“Private intelligence.”
“Where is he now?”
Bellini hesitated.
“Missing.”
“Since when?”
“Two years.”
Camille’s eyes narrowed.
“Was he the gray man?”
“No. Adrian was shorter. Blond.”
“Then who watched us?”
“I don’t know.”
Alessandro looked at the drawings again.
Vittorio?
No.
His uncle was shorter and far too recognizable.
Another operative.
A second faction.
The conspiracy had begun to look less like a single betrayal and more like several overlapping agendas.
That evening Camille and Sophie returned to their hotel.
Alessandro assigned discreet security to the building.
Camille noticed immediately.
She called him.
“You promised.”
“I promised no intimidation.”
“There are two men outside the lobby.”
“They are licensed private security.”
“I said no visible guards.”
“They’re wearing normal clothes.”
“One is six-foot-five and shaped like a refrigerator.”
Alessandro sighed.
“That’s Marco.”
“I don’t care what his name is.”
“He is exceptionally good at his job.”
“He looks like he eats smaller bodyguards.”
Despite herself, Camille laughed.
Alessandro heard it.
Silence followed.
Both remembered how natural that sound once felt between them.
“I’ll move them across the street,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Camille.”
“Yes?”
“I want to see Sophie tomorrow.”
The line became quiet.
“We’re going to the Natural History Museum.”
“I can meet you there.”
“You hate museums.”
“I dislike guided tours.”
“You once called a Roman history exhibit ‘aggressively educational.’”
“I was thirty.”
“You were thirty-three.”
“I’ve matured.”
Camille laughed again.
“All right.”
The next day Alessandro arrived at the museum wearing no tie.
Sophie almost did not recognize him.
“You look different.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Better.”
Camille covered a smile.
They spent three hours beneath dinosaur skeletons and inside halls of ocean life.
Alessandro answered questions when he knew the answers.
When he did not, he admitted it.
That impressed Sophie more.
At lunch she asked him something neither adult expected.
“Did you know my dad?”
Camille stopped moving.
Alessandro looked at her.
Sophie continued eating fries.
“Mom said you knew each other before me, so maybe you knew him too.”
Camille’s face showed panic.
Alessandro could have lied.
He did not.
“I think I did.”
Sophie looked up.
“What was he like?”
Alessandro’s throat tightened.
Camille whispered, “Alessandro.”
He kept his answer careful.
“He made mistakes.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“He worked too much.”
“Mom says that’s boring.”
“She’s right.”
Camille stared at him.
Sophie continued.
“Was he nice?”
Alessandro thought of the man he had been at thirty-three.
Powerful.
Impatient.
Capable of tenderness but unwilling to admit how much he needed it.
“Sometimes.”
“Did he love my mom?”
The museum café noise seemed to vanish.
Alessandro looked directly at Camille.
“Yes.”
Camille’s eyes filled.
Sophie nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Then why did he leave?”
Alessandro struggled for words.
Before he could answer, Camille reached across the table.
“He didn’t know where we were.”
Sophie looked at her.
“What?”
Camille’s voice trembled.
“I told you your father got lost.”
“Yes.”
“I’m beginning to think I was wrong about how.”
Sophie stopped eating.
A child’s intuition moved faster than either adult expected.
Her eyes went from Camille to Alessandro.
Then back.
“No.”
Camille swallowed.
“Sophie—”
“No way.”
Alessandro’s heart began pounding.
Sophie stared at his hands.
Then at her own.
She had noticed what he had.
“What?”
Camille reached for her.
“Sophie.”
The girl’s gray-blue eyes widened.
“Is Alessandro my dad?”
Nobody spoke.
Then Camille said gently, “We’re going to do a test to be completely certain.”
Sophie looked at Alessandro.
He did not move.
He would let her choose the distance between them.
She stared at him for several long seconds.
Then asked the question that mattered more than blood.
“If you are, are you going back to Paris with us?”
Alessandro looked at Camille.
No business decision in his life had ever frightened him as much as that question.
“I don’t know what happens next,” he said carefully.
Sophie’s face fell.
Then he added, “But I’m not disappearing.”
She watched him.
“Promise?”
Alessandro had broken promises before.
To Camille.
To himself.
To people who had trusted him.
This one would be different.
“I promise.”
That afternoon, while they were still at the museum, Matteo called with an identification from Sophie’s drawings.
Facial reconstruction software had produced a likely match for the gray man.
Alessandro stepped away to answer.
“Who?”
Matteo hesitated.
“You need to see this yourself.”
“Send it.”
Seconds later a photograph appeared on Alessandro’s phone.
The man was tall.
Gray-haired.
Older now.
Alessandro knew him instantly.
He had not seen that face in eleven years.
Not since the funeral.
The gray man watching Camille and Sophie in Paris was Alessandro’s half-brother.
A man the entire Vitali family believed had died before Sophie was born.
May you like
Marco Vitali.
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