Chapter 3 - THE SECRET IN THE MUSIC BOXThe nursery on the third floor was larger than my entire apartment in Queens, but it felt like a gilded cage.
floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Central Park, but heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight, blocking out the afternoon light. The room was packed with thousands of dollars worth of untouched toys: electric cars, giant stuffed bears, custom wooden train sets. Yet the room felt completely empty of life.
I spent the next three hours sitting on the soft sheepskin rug with Leo. I didn't push him to talk. I didn't force him to play. I simply sat there with a bowl of simple warm oatmeal I had prepared myself in the small kitchenette attached to the nursery, using sealed ingredients I opened with my own hands.
Slowly, incredibly, Leo crept out from under his small wooden teepee tent. He dragged his feet, his tiny yellow socks whispering against the floor, until he sat beside me. He didn't ask for his mother. He just took the small silver spoon from my hand and ate three bites of oatmeal.
"Good boy," I whispered softly, wiping a spot of warm milk from his chin.
He looked up at me with eyes that were identical to his father's—intense, intelligent, and carrying a weight no three-year-old should ever possess.
"Mama's song," Leo whispered suddenly, tapping his small hand against my knee in a strange, uneven rhythm. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
I frowned gently. "Mama's song? Did she sing to you, Leo?"
He shook his head vigorously, pointing toward the high mahogany bookshelf near the corner of the room. "In the box. The blue box. Mama hid it when the loud man came."
My pulse quickened. "The loud man? Who was the loud man, Leo?"
Leo pressed his small hands over his ears, his shoulders tensing up again. "The man with the cane. He made Mama cry. Then Mama put the blue box high-high."
The man with the cane. Don Antonio.
I stood up slowly, keeping my movements calm so I wouldn't trigger another panic attack. I walked over to the bookshelf. It was filled with collector edition children's books and crystal ornaments. On the top shelf, completely out of a child's reach, sat a small, dusty velvet box in dusty blue.
I dragged a heavy wooden chair over, stepped up onto it, and reached for the box.
It was light, made of antique wood wrapped in faded blue velvet with a small brass keyhole on the front. It was locked.
"Leo," I said, stepping down from the chair and kneeling beside him. "Do you know where the key is?"
Leo didn't answer. Instead, he reached into his small pocket and pulled out his favorite toy—a battered wooden horse with a broken wheel. He turned the horse upside down. Taped securely to the belly of the wooden horse with yellowed scotch tape was a tiny, intricate brass key.
My hands began to shake. Elena Moretti hadn't just died of poison. She had known she was dying. And she had hidden something in her son's nursery before her mind gave out.
I took the key, peeled off the tape, and inserted it into the blue box.
CLICK.
The lid sprang open with a soft, mechanical chime. Inside was a wind-up music box mechanism that began playing a slow, mournful Italian lullaby. But resting on top of the velvet lining wasn't jewelry or family keepsakes.
It was a small, leather-bound diary and three sealed glass vials containing a clear, odorless liquid.
I opened the diary to the last entry, dated eight months ago—just three days before Elena died. Her handwriting was jagged, frantic, clearly written while her hands were failing her:
"If you are reading this, Ricardo, I am already gone. They are putting something in my tea. I can taste the metallic fire in my throat every evening. Antonio came today. He offered me a choice: sign over my family's port docks to his shell company, or watch Leo suffer the same 'illness' I have. I hid the vials I collected from my morning trays. Test them. It’s thallium. Ricardo, do not trust your uncle. But above all... do not trust Sarah. She is the one bringing the trays."
My blood turned to ice.
Sarah.
My mind raced back to last night at Il Verano—the exclusive restaurant where I used to work. Sarah was my coworker. The woman who had grabbed my wrist when I stepped toward Ricardo's table. The woman who had worked as a private event caterer for the Moretti family for over a year.
Before I could process the horror of what I was reading, the heavy oak nursery door swung open.
Standing in the doorway was not Ricardo, and not Dante.
May you like
It was Sarah. She was wearing a crisp white housekeeper's uniform, holding a silver tray with a warm glass of milk and a plate of cookies.
"Oh," Sarah said, her voice dripping with sweet, fake surprise as her eyes landed on the open blue box in my hands. "You found it. I was wondering where Elena put that before she passed."
