Chapter 3 - Breakfast With the Lion)
Daniel moved Maria and Sofia into the fortified suite adjoining his study before sunrise. The windows were bullet-resistant, the walls reinforced, and the only entrance faced two cameras and a guard Daniel chose personally.
Maria inspected the room as if measuring a cell.
"You are safe here," he said.
"A locked door is still a locked door."
"A locked door is useful when killers are outside it."
"And if the killer has the key?"
Daniel had no answer he liked.
He spent the remaining hours before dawn watching archived security footage. The message photograph had come from the east lawn, beyond a blind corner created when the garden cameras reset at two in the morning. Only four people knew about that reset: Daniel, Vincent, Rocco, and the technician who had died of a heart attack six months earlier.
At seven, Daniel ordered breakfast served in the private kitchen. He expected Maria to refuse. Instead, she arrived with Sofia, whose pink bow had been restored and whose suspicion vanished at the sight of pancakes.
Daniel sat at the head of a table built for sixteen. Sofia selected the chair immediately beside him.
"Why is your table so big?" she asked.
"My father liked company."
"Where is he?"
"Dead."
Maria gave Daniel a warning look.
Sofia poured too much syrup. "My daddy is dead too. Mommy says he was brave."
Daniel looked at Maria. "Was he?"
"Sometimes," she said.
Sofia cut a piece of pancake with great concentration. "Mommy says brave doesn't mean not scared. It means you do the good thing while you're scared."
"Your mother says many things."
"She says you need to eat more vegetables."
Maria covered a smile with her coffee cup.
Daniel had not eaten breakfast with family since Matteo's death. The room had once been noisy with arguments, his mother correcting everyone's posture, his father conducting business between bites, Matteo stealing food from Daniel's plate. Now a child with Matteo's eyes was stealing strawberries from the same plate.
He let her.
Vincent entered carrying a black folder. He stopped when he saw them.
"I was told you wanted the Rocco report."
"Sit," Daniel said.
Vincent chose a chair across from Maria. "This is unexpected."
Sofia offered him a strawberry. Vincent declined.
"Rocco boarded no flight and crossed no official border," Vincent said. "His car was found near Newark. Wiped clean. We have people checking ports and private airfields."
"His accounts?"
"Emptied three days ago."
"Before Maria arrived at the mansion."
"Perhaps he knew she was coming."
Maria placed her fork down. "I applied two months ago."
Vincent studied her. "Under documents good enough to survive our screening. That suggests help."
"Or your screening failed."
Daniel watched the exchange. Vincent's expression remained courteous, but his left thumb rubbed the edge of his signet ring. He did that only when angry.
"You have not told him everything," Vincent said.
"Neither have you," Maria replied.
"Enough," Daniel said.
He opened the folder. Rocco's photograph stared from the first page. The burn scar beneath his left ear matched Maria's description. On the final page, Daniel found a record of authorized payments. Rocco had received an unusual bonus on the day Matteo died. The payment came from an internal security account bearing Daniel's digital approval.
"I never approved this."
Vincent leaned closer. "Your signature key was used."
"Who had access?"
"You. Me. Your father before his death. Matteo, for emergencies."
Maria's hand tightened around her cup.
Daniel closed the folder. "Send the file to no one."
"The council will ask why the mansion is locked down."
"Tell them I lost a watch."
Vincent's mouth curved faintly. "Did you?"
Daniel met his gaze. "Not yet."
After Vincent left, Maria carried her dishes to the sink. A small square of paper slipped from the cuff of her uniform and fell to the floor.
Daniel picked it up before she could.
It was a hand-drawn map of the mansion's lower corridor, including the wine cellar, old boiler room, and disused chapel. A red circle marked a wall behind Daniel's study.
"You have been exploring," he said.
Maria paled. "That isn't mine."
"It fell from your sleeve."
"I have never seen it."
Sofia looked up from arranging berries into a smiling face. "The sleepy man gave Mommy paper."
Silence descended.
Maria knelt. "What sleepy man?"
"In the laundry room. He was behind the sheets."
Daniel was already reaching for his gun. "When?"
"Yesterday. He said shh because you don't like noise."
He pressed the alarm beneath the table. No siren sounded; the silent signal locked every exterior door.
"What did he look like?" Maria asked.
Sofia pointed at Daniel's left arm. "He had a bird there."
Daniel looked at his tattoos. Lions, saints, the dates of the dead. No bird.
Sofia took a purple crayon from her pocket and drew on a napkin: a black shape with spread wings and a broken circle above it.
Maria inhaled sharply.
"You know it," Daniel said.
"Matteo drew that symbol in his notebook. He called it the Crow's Crown."
"A crew?"
"A bank. A company. I don't know. He said it was how the traitor washed blood until it looked like money."
Daniel called the guards stationed outside. Neither answered.
He moved toward the suite, but the kitchen lights went out. Steel shutters began descending over the windows. Someone had activated the mansion's siege controls from inside.
From the dark hall came three measured knocks, followed by four notes whistled softly.
Maria pulled Sofia beneath the table.
Daniel aimed at the doorway.
The whistling stopped.
May you like
Then Matteo's voice came through the kitchen speaker.
"Danny, if you're hearing this, they found my daughter."
