Chapter 3 - THE GHOST IN SOPHIA’S ROOMBy noon, the Rossi estate had turned into a fortress preparing for siege.
Men moved through corridors with earpieces and hard eyes. Gates were sealed. Deliveries were stopped at the road and searched twice. Every staff member was questioned. Phones were taken. The kitchen was locked down. The nursery became the most guarded room in New York.
And Hunter became the most watched woman inside it.
She should have felt safer.
She did not.
Safety was not the same thing as freedom. A golden cage was still a cage, even when the sheets were Egyptian cotton and the guards called her ma’am.
After Leo’s fourth feeding, he slept for nearly two hours.
Real sleep.
Not the limp exhaustion of a starving infant, but warm, milk-drunk rest with one fist tucked beside his cheek. His color had improved from waxy gray to pale rose. The change was small. To everyone else, maybe it was medical progress.
To Hunter, it looked like a soul deciding not to leave yet.
She sat beside the crib while Lorenzo stood near the window.
They had barely spoken since morning.
He answered calls in clipped phrases. He gave orders without raising his voice. He asked the doctor questions that made the man sweat. But he did not speak to Hunter unless Leo needed to be moved or the doctor asked for her input.
Hunter preferred it that way.
Lorenzo Rossi’s attention was like standing too close to a fire. Warm enough to save you, hot enough to destroy you.
Still, she felt him watching.
Finally, she said, “You can hold him.”
Lorenzo’s face tightened.
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you?”
His eyes stayed on the ocean.
“Because he sleeps when you hold him.”
“He might sleep when you hold him too.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
Hunter studied him. She had seen men like him before in cheap versions. Men who believed hardness was the only language the world respected. Men who broke things before things could break them.
But this was different.
Lorenzo was not avoiding Leo because he did not care.
He was avoiding him because he cared too much.
Hunter stood carefully and lifted the baby from the crib.
Lorenzo turned.
“No.”
She ignored him.
His eyes flashed.
“I said no.”
“And I heard you.”
“Miss Higgins.”
“Hunter,” she said. “If I’m important enough to feed him, you can use my name.”
His jaw flexed.
“Hunter.”
“Good.” She stepped closer with Leo. “Hold your son.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Lorenzo looked at the baby as if Hunter were handing him a bomb.
“I held him after Sophia died,” he said.
Hunter stopped.
His voice was flat, but his eyes were not.
“He fit in one hand. I kept thinking if I moved wrong, he would stop breathing. The nurse told me to put him against my chest. Skin to skin. That it would help him regulate.”
“What happened?”
“He cried.”
“That’s normal.”
“He cried until they took him from me.”
Hunter’s expression softened despite herself.
“And you thought you hurt him.”
Lorenzo did not answer.
He did not need to.
Hunter stepped closer.
“He was crying because he was alive.”
Something crossed Lorenzo’s face.
Pain. Anger. Shame.
Maybe all three.
Hunter placed Leo carefully against his father’s chest.
Lorenzo froze.
Every part of him went still except his breathing, which turned shallow and uneven.
Leo stirred.
His tiny face wrinkled.
For one awful second, Hunter thought he would cry.
Instead, the baby settled.
One small hand curled into Lorenzo’s shirt.
Lorenzo looked down.
The mask broke.
Not completely. Men like him learned early how to rebuild walls while the bricks were still falling. But enough.
He lowered his face over his son, and when he spoke, the words were barely sound.
“Leo.”
Hunter looked away.
Some grief deserved privacy.
But then she saw the door across the hall.
It was open.
A room beyond it sat untouched in pale afternoon light. Cream curtains. A vanity with perfume bottles. A blue silk scarf draped over the back of a chair. Fresh flowers, though no one living seemed to use the room.
Sophia’s room.
Hunter knew it without being told.
Lorenzo saw where she was looking.
“Do not go in there.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“No one goes in there.”
She nodded.
But the warning came too late.
Because from where she stood, she could see something on the vanity mirror.
Not written in dust.
Written in lipstick.
Three words, faint but visible from the hallway.
ASK ABOUT MARA.
Hunter looked back at Lorenzo.
His face had gone white.
“You see it too,” she whispered.
He handed Leo back to her so fast she almost gasped.
Then he crossed the hall.
Hunter followed despite herself, stopping at the threshold.
The room smelled of roses and absence.
Lorenzo stood before the vanity, staring at the mirror.
The lipstick was dried, dark red, almost brown with age. Someone had written the words in a trembling hand.
ASK ABOUT MARA.
“Who is Mara?” Hunter asked.
Lorenzo did not answer.
His hand hovered near the mirror but did not touch it.
Hunter realized something.
“You didn’t know that was there.”
“No.”
“How is that possible if nobody comes in here?”
His face hardened.
“Because I have not been in this room since the funeral.”
The confession hung between them.
Hunter looked around. Everything had been preserved exactly as Sophia left it. Jewelry on a tray. Shoes beneath a chair. A book open on the bedside table. A robe hanging on a hook.
A shrine.
A prison.
Lorenzo turned toward the hallway.
“Marco!”
One of his men appeared immediately.
“Yes, boss?”
“Who has access to this room?”
“No one.”
“Wrong answer.”
Marco glanced at the mirror and went still.
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
Marco nodded and left.
Hunter shifted Leo in her arms. “Lorenzo.”
He looked at her sharply, maybe because she had used his first name.
“What?”
“Who is Mara?”
For a moment she thought he would refuse.
Then he said, “Mara Bellini. Sophia’s younger sister.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Hunter’s skin prickled.
“How?”
“She drowned five years ago.”
Hunter looked at the words on the mirror.
Ask about Mara.
“Are you sure?”
Lorenzo’s eyes cut to hers.
Men like him did not like that question.
But Hunter did not take it back.
Before he could answer, Dr. Halloran hurried into the hall with a folder in his hand.
“Mr. Rossi.”
Lorenzo stepped out of Sophia’s room.
“What?”
The doctor looked at Hunter, then at Leo.
“I have preliminary results.”
“Speak.”
“The residue in two bottles from the nursery contained trace amounts of a sedative. Not enough to kill an adult. Enough to suppress appetite and weaken an infant over repeated exposure.”
Hunter’s knees almost buckled.
Lorenzo became terrifyingly still.
“And the syringe?”
“Same compound. Higher concentration.”
The hallway seemed to darken.
Hunter looked down at Leo. The baby slept, unaware that someone had been quietly starving him while his father blamed God, doctors, and himself.
Lorenzo’s voice was calm.
Too calm.
“Who signed for the medication?”
Dr. Halloran swallowed.
“It wasn’t from the medical supply.”
“Then from where?”
The doctor opened the folder and handed him a printed lab note.
“It’s a veterinary sedative. Usually used in small doses for nervous animals.”
Hunter felt bile rise in her throat.
Lorenzo read the note.
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
He answered without greeting.
A distorted voice came through loud enough for Hunter to hear.
“You should have let the baby die, Rossi.”
Lorenzo’s eyes lifted to Hunter’s.
The voice laughed softly.
“And now that maid is going to wish she had stayed downstairs.”
The call ended.
No one moved.
Then Leo woke in Hunter’s arms and began to cry.
Not weakly this time.
Loud.
Angry.
Alive.
May you like
And in the silence that followed, Lorenzo Rossi made a promise that chilled every man in the hallway.
“I am going to burn the world down,” he said, “until I find who touched my son.”
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