Chapter 6 - The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep
Leo woke screaming at dawn.
I heard him from across the hall.
By the time I opened my door, Alessandro was already carrying him into the corridor.
Leo’s face was wet with tears.
“Glass.”
He clung to his father.
“It was falling again.”
Alessandro murmured to him in Italian.
Leo saw me over his shoulder.
“Mara.”
I stepped closer.
“I’m okay.”
His eyes dropped toward my bandages.
“Does it hurt?”
“Only when I try to fly.”
He stared at me.
Then a tiny smile appeared.
Alessandro did not smile.
But something in his shoulders loosened.
Leo reached for me.
Alessandro hesitated.
My back still hurt too much to lift him.
So I sat on the hallway bench.
Leo climbed beside me.
He placed the plastic dinosaur in my lap.
“You can keep Rex tonight.”
“That seems serious.”
“He bites bad dreams.”
“I could use one of those.”
Leo leaned against my arm.
Within minutes, he fell asleep.
Alessandro remained standing across from us.
Watching.
I lowered my voice.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I’m being guarded by a dinosaur.”
His eyes rested on Leo.
“My wife used to do that.”
I said nothing.
He rarely mentioned her.
I knew instinctively that pressing would make him disappear behind the cold mask again.
He sat at the other end of the bench.
“Elena died three years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She was driving to pick Leo up from preschool.”
“A truck hit her vehicle.”
I turned toward him.
“Accident?”
“For three years, I believed it was.”
The corridor suddenly felt colder.
“What changed?”
“Two months ago, one of my men found evidence the brakes had been damaged.”
I stared at sleeping Leo.
“You think whoever killed her is after him now.”
“I think someone has been removing my family one person at a time.”
His words settled between us.
Brother.
Wife.
Now son.
“And you?”
He gave a humorless smile.
“They have tried.”
I should have been horrified.
Instead, I looked at the scar on his face and understood.
“How does my grandmother fit into this?”
“I do not know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“No.”
His voice remained calm.
“But it is true.”
A phone buzzed.
Alessandro answered.
He listened without speaking.
Then his expression hardened.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Do not touch anything.”
He ended the call.
“What?”
“They found Chloe.”
Relief hit me so fast I almost cried.
“Is she okay?”
Alessandro looked at Leo.
Then at me.
“She is alive.”
The wording made my relief vanish.
“Where?”
“In an abandoned garage.”
“She was sedated.”
“Her hands were tied.”
“Oh, God.”
“There was something written on the wall behind her.”
My throat tightened.
“What?”
Alessandro showed me a photograph.
Black paint.
Large letters.
RETURN THE GREEN EYE.
I stared at the message.
The green eye.
The emerald ring.
My grandmother’s ring.
“They think I have it.”
Alessandro’s gaze sharpened.
May you like
“No.”
“They think you know where it is.”
