Chapter 6 - The Unseen Watcher
Over the next month, Matteo Santoro began a silent, invisible ritual. He started following the little girl—not out of suspicion, but out of a compulsion he could neither explain nor control.
He used the hidden architectural passages of the old mansion—service stairs and observation balconies built by his grandfather during the fascist era to monitor the estate staff. From behind the louvered wooden shutters of the second-floor gallery, Matteo watched Luna every single day.
He watched her sit on the stone bench by the fountain, feeding breadcrumbs to the sparrows. He watched her draw crude, beautiful pictures with yellow and red crayons on scraps of discarded ledger paper that Elena had given her.
One afternoon, Matteo watched from the shadows of the upper library as Luna wandered into the vast, towering room while the librarians were away at lunch. She looked up at the endless shelves of leather-bound books, her small jaw dropping. She walked over to the poetry section, reached up as high as her tiny arms could stretch, and pulled a heavy volume off the bottom shelf.
The book slipped from her fingers, tumbling toward her toes.
Matteo’s heart jumped into his throat. He lunged forward behind the velvet curtains, his hand gripping the brass latching of the window, ready to break his own rule and run out to save her.
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But Luna had nimble reflexes. She hopped back just in time, the heavy book landing with a dull thud on the Persian rug. She didn't cry. She simply squatted down, picked up the book, hugged it tightly against her chest, and sat right down on the floor, flipping open the pages filled with nineteenth-century Italian verse.
Matteo watched through a crack in the velvet, his gray eyes shining with an emotion he hadn't permitted himself to feel since the day his daughter died. The child didn't destroy the memory of Aurora; somehow, impossibly, her fierce, bright spirit was keeping the room from turning completely to dust.
