Chapter 1 - The Lion in the Shadows
The silence of the Moretti estate was never truly quiet. It was filled with the rhythmic hum of security monitors, the faint click of heavy locks engaging every forty-five minutes, and the persistent, cold drizzle of a coastal rain beating against bulletproof glass.
At thirty-four, I was a man who had forgotten the texture of a dream. Three years ago, my older brother, Leo, had died in a burning warehouse by the docks—an ambush meant for me. Since that night, my eyelids had refused to remain shut for more than twenty minutes at a time. Medical specialists from London, Zurich, and New York had stayed in my guest suites, prescribed experimental sedatives, administered intravenous neuro-blockers, and ultimately left with generous checks and defeated expressions.
My nervous system was trapped in a perpetual state of high-alert combat readiness. My body survived, but my mind was a hallway of ghosts.
And then came the lion.
Lily took three small, deliberate steps across the Persian rug, her small yellow-clad feet making no sound at all. She stopped right at the edge of the amber light cast by my reading lamp.
"I have a method," she announced, her voice piping through the heavy, oppressive silence of the room.
"A method," I repeated flatly. My voice was rough, a gravelly instrument stripped down by years of night-shift cigar smoke and unspoken grief.
"For sleeping." She held up the gray rabbit, whose remaining ear flopped sadly over her small fist. "Barnaby knows it too."
"Lily, it is twelve fifteen in the morning," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose where a dull, familiar ache had taken up permanent residence. "Your mother will wake up, realize you aren't in your bed, and think someone has kidnapped you. Do you know what happens when people think someone has been taken from this house?"
"Guards run around with walkie-talkies," she said promptly. "It's very noisy."
I stared at her. "Go back to the cottage."
Instead of turning around, she climbed onto the heavy velvet armchair situated beside my mahogany desk. It was an enormous piece of furniture, dark and imposing, where capos from the Five Families sat when they came to negotiate territory. Lily looked impossibly small sitting in it, her yellow lion pajamas glowing against the dark leather.
She arranged Barnaby on her knees, smoothed down his frayed fur, and looked up at me with wide, unblinking hazel eyes.
"Mrs. Ricci said the bad dream is stuck in your head," Lily said softly. "Like a thorn in a dog's paw."
My hand tightened around my cold coffee cup. Mrs. Ricci was going to be assigned to the kitchen staff at the secondary estate in Calabria if she kept offering psychiatric evaluations of the Don to three-year-olds.
"Mrs. Ricci should stick to making gnocchi," I muttered.
"She said if you don't sleep, your heart will turn into a dark stone and then the bad men will take the house."
The words hit the quiet room like a dropped glass. I felt the skin at the back of my neck prickle. A child’s repetition of servants' gossip, certainly. But in my world, servants' gossip was often the first draft of an obituary.
"Did she say who the bad men were?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral, the same tone I used when interrogating a turncoat manager.
Lily shrugged her small shoulders, her attention already shifting to the silver paperweight on my desk. "Just the people who come when the sun goes down. The ones who give you the heavy papers."
She was referring to my cousin, Julian. Julian was the only family member who visited after midnight, bringing "urgent" supply chain logistics and shipping manifests for me to sign when my fatigue was at its absolute peak.
"Julian," I said quietly.
"He smells like sour cherries," Lily noted, wrinkled her nose, and then leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. "Now. Are you going to lie down or do I have to hold Barnaby's ear?"
I looked at the small girl sitting in the chair that once belonged to men who ran illegal dockyards. I looked at the dark circles under my own eyes reflected in the dark windowpane. If I called Sophia now, it would create a commotion. Guards would be reprimanded. Security protocols would be tightened. Sophia, a widow who had served as my housekeeper for two years with quiet, flawless efficiency, would tremble and apologize for an hour.
"Five minutes," I said, leaning back against my pillows, not bothering to take off my waistcoat or unbutton my collar. "Five minutes, Lily. Then I am walking you back to the cottage myself."
"Okay," she said.
May you like
She slid off the velvet chair, dragged her feet over to the side of my bed, and dropped Barnaby onto my chest. The stuffed animal smelled faintly of baby lotion and laundry detergent—a strange, alien scent in a room that usually smelled of leather, gun oil, and stale espresso.
Then, without asking, she sat down on the floor right beside my bed, leaned her small head against the carved mahogany bedpost, and began to speak.
