Chapter 2 - The Fourteen Missing Minutes
Luca moved before anyone else.
Not toward Marco.
Toward Mia.
He stepped between the child and the security chief just as Marco’s hand disappeared inside his jacket.
Julian grabbed Marco’s wrist.
Two guards rushed forward.
“Easy!” Marco shouted.
They pinned his arm behind him.
Something dropped from his jacket.
Not a weapon.
A phone.
Marco’s face twisted with anger.
“I was reaching for this.”
Luca didn’t relax.
“Why?”
“Because I received a message thirty seconds ago.”
Julian released him cautiously.
Marco picked up the phone and handed it to Luca.
A single anonymous text filled the screen.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE BRIEFCASE.
Luca read it twice.
Underneath was an image.
Mia’s brown briefcase.
Placed on a concrete floor.
Beside it was that day’s newspaper.
Elena covered her mouth.
Mia tried to look.
Luca immediately tilted the screen away.
“Where was this sent from?” Julian asked.
“Unknown number,” Marco said.
“We trace it.”
“I already started.”
Luca studied Marco.
“Mia says she saw you.”
Marco’s expression tightened.
“I wasn’t in the passage.”
“Were you near it?”
“No.”
Mia tugged Luca’s jacket.
“I saw him.”
Marco looked at her.
“When?”
“Bird man went in. Then you came.”
Marco froze.
Luca caught it.
Not guilt.
Recognition.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Marco exhaled.
“I saw Julian near the private office at approximately three-fifteen.”
Julian’s expression barely changed.
“You didn’t mention that earlier.”
“Because you’re Luca’s adviser. You go near his office every day.”
“And?”
“I also saw someone wearing my security jacket entering the west hallway.”
Luca’s gaze sharpened.
“Someone?”
“The camera angle was bad. I assumed it was one of my men.”
“Your jackets have numbers.”
Marco nodded.
“The jacket was mine.”
A strange silence followed.
Julian rubbed his jaw.
“So somebody wants a three-year-old to identify both of us.”
“That appears to be the plan,” Marco said.
Luca looked between them.
His oldest adviser.
His security chief.
One—or both—could be lying.
Elena stepped forward.
“I need to take Mia away from here.”
“No.”
She stared at Luca.
His tone softened.
“Not alone.”
“I’m her mother.”
“And somebody entered my private passage, stole something from your daughter, disabled my cameras, and knows about a letter connected to my father’s death.”
Elena’s eyes flashed.
“You think keeping her here is safer?”
“I think whoever did this already knows where you live.”
She went still.
Luca regretted the sentence immediately.
Not because it was untrue.
Because of the fear it placed in her eyes.
“I’ll arrange rooms in the east wing,” he said. “Two guards outside at all times.”
“I don’t want Mia surrounded by guards.”
“I don’t want Mia disappearing.”
The words left him more sharply than intended.
Elena stared.
So did Julian.
Luca looked away.
“Until I know what’s happening, you stay here.”
Mia raised her hand.
Everyone looked at her.
“Can I still have pancakes?”
Luca blinked.
Elena closed her eyes.
Marco almost smiled despite the situation.
“Yes,” Luca said. “You can still have pancakes.”
“With stars?”
“Yes.”
“Chocolate?”
“Mia,” Elena warned.
Luca sighed.
“Yes. Chocolate.”
The child seemed satisfied.
That night, Luca didn’t sleep.
At 1:20 a.m., he sat in his father’s old study staring at a photograph taken twelve years earlier.
His father, Alessandro Valente, stood beside a younger Luca.
Julian was in the background.
So was Marco, barely twenty-five then.
All of them smiling.
Luca remembered that day.
A summer barbecue.
His mother still alive.
His sister Sofia home from college.
Before everything broke apart.
Before his father died.
Before his mother followed eighteen months later.
Before Sofia moved to Europe and stopped speaking to him except on holidays.
The door opened.
Elena stood there.
“You’re awake.”
“So are you.”
“I checked on Mia.”
“She okay?”
“She asked why you don’t have pajamas with dinosaurs.”
Luca stared at her.
Elena smiled faintly.
“She thinks everyone should.”
“I’ll consider updating my wardrobe.”
She entered slowly.
For the first time, Luca noticed she wasn’t wearing her housekeeping uniform.
Simple gray sweater.
Black pants.
Hair loose around her shoulders.
She looked younger.
More vulnerable.
He hated noticing.
“Tell me about the letter,” he said.
Elena sat opposite him.
“I found it in the east guest room.”
“Why were you cleaning there?”
“Mrs. Dalton told me to prepare it for renovations.”
Luca frowned.
“Who asked for renovations?”
“She said Julian.”
There it was again.
Julian.
“Go on.”
“The drawer was stuck. When I removed it, an envelope fell behind the cabinet.”
“Addressed to?”
“Your father.”
“Handwriting?”
“Typed.”
“What exactly did it say?”
“I only read part.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
Elena folded her hands.
“It said: ‘Alessandro, if anything happens to me, Cross knows about the accounts. He knows what Bell did that night. Do not trust either of them until you find the original ledger.’”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
Cross.
Bell.
Julian Cross.
Marco Bell.
Both names.
Both men.
“What night?”
“It didn’t say.”
“Who signed it?”
“I didn’t reach the bottom.”
“Why?”
“Because Mia came looking for me. I folded it and put it in my pocket. Later, I hid it in her briefcase because…”
She stopped.
“Because?”
Elena looked embarrassed.
“Because nobody opens Mia’s briefcase.”
Despite everything, Luca understood the logic.
Mia guarded that ridiculous brown case like it contained nuclear launch codes.
He leaned back.
“What else was in it?”
“Her drawings.”
“Anything unusual?”
“She keeps everything.”
Luca remembered a thought.
“What did she draw recently?”
Elena shrugged.
“You. Me. The gardens. Staff.”
“People?”
“All the time.”
“Specific people?”
Elena looked toward him.
“Why?”
“If Mia saw something and didn’t understand it, she might have drawn it.”
Elena’s face changed.
They went directly to Mia’s room.
The little girl slept diagonally across the enormous bed Luca’s staff had prepared, one foot outside the blanket.
Elena quietly searched her coloring supplies.
Most of Mia’s drawings had been inside the stolen briefcase.
But beneath a stuffed rabbit, Elena found a folded sheet.
She handed it to Luca.
Four figures.
Mia.
Elena.
Luca.
And another man.
Silver scribble on one hand.
A bird.
Julian.
Behind him, Mia had drawn a rectangular object.
Luca stared.
“What is that?”
Elena whispered, “A box?”
He looked closer.
The object had small circles down one side.
Numbers.
A keypad.
Luca knew exactly what it was.
A safe.
His father had owned an old mechanical safe.
It had vanished after his death.
“Where did she see this?”
They woke Mia gently.
The child rubbed her eyes.
Luca sat beside her.
“Mia, remember this drawing?”
She nodded sleepily.
“Where was Uncle Julian standing?”
“Old room.”
“What old room?”
“The dusty one.”
Elena frowned.
“Mia, when were you in a dusty room?”
“I followed bird man.”
Luca’s blood chilled.
“When?”
“Long time.”
Three-year-old concept of time was useless.
“Did he know you were there?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“He opened the wall.”
“Like my secret door?”
She nodded.
“Then what?”
“He took a book.”
“What book?”
“A big one.”
“What color?”
“Red.”
Luca and Elena exchanged a look.
The original ledger.
Maybe.
“Mia, did you tell anyone?”
She shook her head.
“Why?”
“Bird man was mad.”
“What did he say?”
Mia frowned, trying to remember.
“He said… ‘Should have burned it with him.’”
Luca’s entire body went still.
Elena whispered his name.
But Luca was already standing.
Julian Cross had been his father’s closest adviser.
Then his.
For ten years.
If Mia had heard correctly—
Luca walked into the hallway and called Marco.
“Where is Julian?”
A pause.
Then Marco answered.
“He left the estate twenty minutes ago.”
“Why was he allowed to leave?”
“You didn’t order him detained.”
Luca cursed under his breath.
“Find him.”
“We’re trying.”
Luca ended the call.
Elena had followed him.
“Do you think he killed your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you think he knows something.”
“Yes.”
A sound came from behind them.
Mia stood in the doorway hugging her rabbit.
“I forgot.”
Luca crouched.
“What?”
“The bird man gave the red book to somebody.”
“Who?”
Mia shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“What did they look like?”
“Lady.”
Luca’s heartbeat slowed.
“A woman?”
Mia nodded.
“Did you see her face?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Mia thought.
Then touched her neck.
“She had Mama’s necklace.”
Elena instinctively grabbed the small gold pendant at her throat.
Luca looked at it.
A simple oval locket.
“What does she mean?”
Elena had gone white.
“My necklace belonged to my mother.”
“And?”
“She had a matching one.”
“Where is your mother?”
Elena stared at him.
“She died when I was seventeen.”
Luca waited.
May you like
Elena slowly shook her head.
“At least… that’s what I was told.”
