Chapter 2 - The Echoes of the Past
"The lady with the dark hair said you would be watching, Mr. Dante," Emma’s small voice carried across the frozen lawn, clear and undisturbed by the bitter wind. "She said you’d be angry, but you need to listen."
My heart pounded against my ribs like a trapped beast. I moved away from the window, descending the grand mahogany staircase of my estate in strides that were fast, measured, and dangerous. My lieutenant, Marco, stepped out from the shadows near the foyer, his hand instinctively resting on the holster beneath his tailored coat.
"Boss? Is everything alright?" Marco asked, his eyes sharp.
"Stay inside," I commanded, my voice gravelly. "Nobody interferes."
I pushed open the heavy oak doors and stepped out into the crisp February air. The snow crunched beneath my leather shoes as I approached the garden. Sophia Rossi, the quiet woman I had hired three months ago to help clean the east wing, was already frantically pulling Emma back by her shoulders. Her face was pale, devoid of blood, as she recognized the ice in my expression.
"Mr. Dante, I am so sorry!" Sophia stammered, wrapping her arms around her daughter, shielding her with her own body. "Emma got away from me while I was changing the linens. She didn't mean to trespass on the lower gardens. We’ll pack our things immediately, sir—please, just let us leave."
"Mamma, stop," Emma said softly, wriggling slightly in her mother's grip. "The silver lady gave me the key to the sleeping legs. The mean men didn't take it all."
I ignored Sophia completely, stopping two feet from the small child. The silver charm sat in Emma's palm. It was an intricate piece of filigree—a winged sparrow carrying an olive branch, custom-crafted by a jeweler in Florence for my wedding anniversary with Elena. There was only one in existence. When the paramedics pulled Elena's lifeless body from the crushed sedan three years ago, the police had handed me her belongings. Her necklace had been snapped off, the pendant missing. The precinct report claimed it had been lost in the crash, swallowed by the twisted metal and burning glass.
"Where did you get that?" I asked, kneeling so I was at eye level with the child. I tried to soften my voice, but a life spent commanding killer syndicate factions made gentleness a foreign dialect.
Emma didn't flinch. She held out her hand, offering the medallion to me. "Under the floorboard in the room with the big clocks. The lady in the white dress showed me in my dreams. She said, 'Give the sparrow to Dante, and tell him the shadow in his house isn't gone.'"
Sophia looked horrified. "Emma, what are you talking about? You found that in our apartment?"
"No," Emma insisted, turning her bright blue eyes to her mother. "In the big room upstairs. Where the dark curtains are."
The east wing attic. The room where Elena used to restore antique clocks, a wing of the mansion that had been locked keyless since the night of her murder. No maid had access to it; I carried the only master key on my person at all times.
"Papa..."
The voice was faint, fragile, like dry glass cracking underfoot.
I looked up. Isabella was staring at me from her wheelchair. Her eyes, usually clouded with an empty, hollow apathy that broke my heart every single day, were bright. Tears rolled down her small cheeks, cutting through the pale dust of her skin.
"My toes," Isabella whispered, her voice trembling with a child’s utter bewilderment. "Papa, they tingle. It feels like... like fire bugs."
I shifted my stance, dropping to both knees in the dirt beside my daughter's chair. I reached out, my thick, scarred hands trembling as I touched the hem of her blanket. Slowly, I peeled it back. Isabella was wearing thick wool socks. I cupped her right heel.
"Isabella," I breathed, afraid that if I spoke too loudly, the illusion would shatter and plunge us back into our endless nightmare. "Try to move it again. For me."
Isabella bit her lower lip. She focused all her energy on her right leg. Sweat beaded on her forehead. For a second, nothing happened, and my chest tightened with a familiar, suffocating despair. But then, her foot flexed upward. Her calf muscle tightened—a muscle that three distinct world-renowned neurosurgeons had declared completely disconnected from her spinal pathways.
"Merciful God," Marco murmured, having ignored my orders to stay inside. He stood a few feet back, his jaw open, his hand having completely fallen away from his sidearm. "It's a miracle, Boss."
"There are no miracles in our world, Marco," I snapped, though my eyes were wet with unbidden moisture. I looked up at Sophia Rossi, who was trembling violently, clutching Emma to her chest. "Sophia. Look at me."
The maid raised her eyes, filled with absolute terror. She knew who I was. The world knew Dante Moretti as a ruthless shipping magnate, but the underbelly of the East Coast knew me as Il Fantasma—the ghost who liquidated an entire mafia family in forty-eight hours.
"Who sent you here?" I asked, my voice dangerously low. "Who gave your daughter that pendant?"
"N-nobody, Mr. Dante! I swear on my life!" Sophia cried, tears streaming down her face. "I am just a widow from Brooklyn. I saw the listing for the housekeeping position three months ago through an agency. I don't know anything about pendants or... or miracles! Emma has always been... strange. She sees things. She knows things she shouldn't. Her grandmother was a woman from the old country, from Calabria... people used to bring sick children to her!"
"My grandma said herbs talk to the blood," Emma added simply, touching her mother's face to soothe her. "And the silver sparrow belongs to the sleeping girl's mother."
I stood up slowly, the silver charm heavy in my palm. The metal was cold, but where Emma had held it, it retained a faint, unsettling warmth.
"Marco," I ordered.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Bring Dr. Mercer here immediately. Don't tell him why. Bring him under armed escort if you have to. And bring double the security detail from the docks. I want this estate locked down. No one enters, no one leaves."
"What about the maid and the child?" Marco asked, casting a wary glance at Sophia.
I looked at Emma. The three-year-old was looking up at the dead maple tree above us. She reached out her hand, as if catching an invisible leaf.
"They stay," I said softly. "Move them from the staff quarters in the basement to the guest suites on the second floor. Give them whatever they want."
May you like
"Mr. Dante, please—" Sophia started.
"You aren't in danger, Sophia," I said, cutting her off, though my eyes remained locked on the silver sparrow. "Not from me. But if what your daughter is saying is true... if someone placed this pendant in my house, then the people who killed my wife never actually left."
