Chapter 3 - What Lily Remembered
Lily spent the night in the pediatric intensive care unit.
Her oxygen level improved shortly after midnight.
By three in the morning, doctors believed she would recover completely.
Leo did not leave her bedside.
He sat in a chair too small for him, one hand wrapped around Lily’s tiny fingers.
His suit jacket was somewhere in the estate.
His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows.
For the first time in years, he looked less like Leo Rossi and more like a terrified thirty-eight-year-old father.
Lily slept with the stuffed rabbit tucked beneath her arm.
At 4:16 a.m., the hospital door opened.
Mateo stepped inside.
Leo looked up.
“How is Beatrice?”
“Seven stitches in her cheek.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
“Two fractured fingers.”
Silence.
“Bruised ribs.”
Leo looked down at Lily.
Mateo continued.
“The doctors want to keep Beatrice overnight.”
“Put security outside her room.”
“Already done.”
“What about Victoria?”
“At the estate.”
“Police?”
“Her attorney arrived before they did.”
Leo’s eyes hardened.
Mateo placed a tablet on the windowsill.
“We have another problem.”
“The cameras.”
“Someone disabled them using your code.”
“Victoria knew my code?”
“She shouldn’t have.”
Leo slowly stood.
“How many people know it?”
“You.”
“You.”
“Gianni.”
Leo looked toward him.
Gianni Morello had protected the Rossi family for eleven years.
He controlled the estate security system.
He had carried Lily out of the wreckage after the bombing that killed Sofia.
Leo trusted him with his daughter’s life.
Mateo did not need to say anything else.
A small movement came from the bed.
Lily was awake.
“Daddy?”
Leo was beside her instantly.
“I’m here.”
“Bee?”
“She’s okay.”
Lily’s face crumpled.
“I want her.”
“You’ll see her.”
“Victoria hurt Bee.”
Leo remained very still.
Mateo moved toward the door.
Leo stopped him.
“Stay.”
Lily stared at her rabbit.
“Victoria said Bee was nobody.”
Leo’s eyes darkened.
“She said people like Bee disappear and nobody asks questions.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened.
Leo kept his voice soft.
“What happened before Victoria took you downstairs?”
Lily hesitated.
“You won’t be mad?”
“Never at you.”
“I was in your office.”
Leo glanced at Mateo.
“Why?”
“I wanted Mommy’s picture.”
There was one photograph of Sofia in Leo’s desk.
He kept it there because he could not bear to display it anywhere else.
Lily continued.
“Victoria was there.”
“What was she doing?”
“She had your drawer open.”
Leo’s face changed.
“What drawer?”
“The one with the silver handle.”
Mateo took a slow breath.
The locked drawer.
The one containing Leo’s private financial ledgers, passport copies, property records, and security documents.
“She was talking to a man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he inside the office?”
Lily shook her head.
“Phone.”
“What did she say?”
Lily squeezed the rabbit tighter.
“She said she looked everywhere.”
Leo waited.
“She said Mommy must have hidden it before the car exploded.”
The room became completely silent.
Mateo stared at Leo.
Leo’s hand tightened around the bedrail.
“What did the man say?”
“I couldn’t hear.”
“What did Victoria say after that?”
Lily’s voice became smaller.
“She said if she didn’t find it, her father would be angry.”
Leo closed his eyes once.
Then Lily whispered something that made Mateo take a step closer.
“She said they should have searched Mommy before they put her in the ground.”
Leo did not move.
For two years, he had believed Sofia Rossi died because an enemy family had planted a bomb beneath his car.
Sofia had taken that car instead of hers because Lily had spilled juice in the back seat of the family SUV.
It had seemed like cruel chance.
The wrong person in the wrong vehicle.
The bombing started a war that killed men on both sides.
Now Lily was telling him Victoria Kensington had been searching for something Sofia hid before she died.
And Victoria’s father knew about it.
Leo bent down and kissed Lily’s forehead.
“Princess, I need you to tell me one more thing.”
Lily nodded.
“What was Victoria looking for?”
Lily stared at her stuffed rabbit.
“She kept saying one word.”
May you like
“What word?”
“Bluebird.”
