Chapter 5 - THE EMPTY CRADLE
Lorenzo ordered Enzo confined to the eastern wing.
Camilla refused to leave her room voluntarily.
Dante placed guards outside both doors.
Dr. Vale was taken to the basement interrogation chamber.
Bianca, the night nurse, remained unconscious.
Dr. Reed found enough sedative in her blood to kill someone smaller.
She had not simply fallen asleep after drinking wine.
Someone had silenced her too.
At dawn, Leo finally slept without the monitor alarming.
I placed him in a portable crib beside the guest-room bed.
Then I went into the bathroom and locked the door.
My milk stained the front of my borrowed shirt.
My body ached.
I sat on the tile floor and cried so quietly that nobody outside would hear.
The same body that failed to bring Lily home had kept Leo alive.
I hated myself for thinking that.
Lily’s death was not my body’s failure.
I knew the words.
I did not believe them yet.
A soft knock came from the other side.
“Maya.”
Lorenzo.
I wiped my face.
“Leo is sleeping.”
“I know.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To make sure you are alive.”
I almost laughed.
“You have guards for that.”
“Guards can count heartbeats.”
“They cannot always recognize when someone is disappearing.”
The sentence surprised me.
I opened the door.
He stood in the hallway without his jacket.
For the first time, he looked less like the country’s most feared mafia boss and more like a man who had not slept since his wife died.
He held a small white blanket.
“Dante searched the employment agency.”
He handed it to me.
Lily’s name was embroidered in one corner.
My knees weakened.
“This was in Camilla’s private office.”
I pressed the blanket against my mouth.
The hospital had told me it was lost during transfer.
Camilla had kept it.
“Why?”
Lorenzo’s voice became hard.
“Because you were chosen before you entered this house.”
Inside the blanket’s folded edge, Dante found a tiny tracking tag.
The same company supplied the tags used in Rossi shipments.
Camilla had monitored me from the hospital.
The staffing agency that hired me was registered to a charity she controlled.
Every part of my arrival had been arranged.
“I want to see Derek,” I said.
“He is dead.”
“I know.”
“I want to see him.”
Lorenzo did not argue.
Derek’s body lay inside the estate clinic.
A white sheet covered him.
His face looked younger without anger moving through it.
I stood beside the table.
I had imagined his death many times after Lily died.
In those fantasies, relief came immediately.
The real thing felt empty.
Lorenzo remained near the door.
“Dr. Vale killed him.”
“Yes.”
“He may have killed Elena too.”
I looked toward him.
“You said she died from childbirth complications.”
“That is what Vale signed.”
The similarities were impossible to ignore.
A woman died.
A doctor controlled the records.
Camilla managed the grief.
Lorenzo removed something from his pocket.
A silver key shaped like a crescent moon.
“Elena wore this around her neck.”
“It disappeared after her funeral.”
“We found it inside Derek’s jacket.”
I touched the key.
“Why would he have it?”
“Before he died, he said Pearl gave him proof that she controlled the doctor.”
“This may be that proof.”
The key opened a safe hidden beneath the nursery floor.
Inside were medical records.
Elena’s diary.
And a small video camera.
Lorenzo pressed play.
His late wife appeared on the screen holding newborn Leo.
She looked exhausted.
But alive.
“If anything happens to me,” she whispered, “do not trust Adrian Vale.”
“He says Leo is weak.”
“He is not.”
“Someone is putting something in my tea.”
“And Camilla keeps asking whether Lorenzo has changed the succession papers.”
Lorenzo stopped the video.
His hand shook.
The next file began automatically.
Elena looked directly into the camera.
May you like
“Enzo is not trying to inherit Lorenzo’s criminal empire.”
“He is trying to inherit something far larger.”
