Chapter 6 - The Pink Backpack
The trap was set three days later, on the morning of May second.
The rain had cleared, leaving the grounds of the estate bathed in a bright, deceptive spring sunlight. The white marble terraces reflected the blue sky, and the air smelled of blooming dogwood trees and rich soil.
At seven o'clock in the morning, Lorenzo was sitting at the head of the long walnut table in the grand dining hall, reviewing a stack of legal documents regarding the upcoming merger with the Bellini family.
Beside him stood Vivian Bellini, wearing a pale blue silk dress, her jeweled fingers resting on his chair back as she leaned down to point out a clause in the contract.
On his left sat Vincent Russo, his face calm, sharp, and focused on his tablet.
Sophia was cleaning the marble baseboards in the grand foyer just outside the dining hall doors. Emma was sitting on a low bench beside her mother’s bucket, quietly drawing pictures of ducks on the back of an old envelope with her pink crayon. Her faded pink backpack sat on the bench beside her, its zipper pinned shut with the safety pin.
Nurse Brenda came down the grand staircase, holding Isabella by the hand. The five-year-old was dressed in a pink cotton dress, her color vastly improved, her small hand holding Emma’s grass bracelet tightly around her wrist.
“Papa!” Isabella called out, running into the dining hall, her bare feet slapping against the marble floor.
Lorenzo set his pen down immediately, a rare, warm smile softening his hard features as he pulled his daughter onto his lap. “How is my princess this morning?”
“I drawn three ducks with Emma!” Isabella announced proudly, showing him her ink-stained fingers. “And my stone is very light today!”
Vivian smiled smoothly, reaching out one jeweled hand to touch Isabella’s shoulder. “She looks so healthy, Lorenzo. It’s wonderful what the new Swiss drops are doing for her.”
Isabella pulled away from Vivian’s hand, burying her face in Lorenzo’s chest.
At that moment, Vincent’s phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up, looked at the screen, and his expression suddenly transformed into one of sharp, alarmed concern.
“Boss,” Vincent said, standing up quickly. “Nurse Brenda... where are the Swiss bottles that arrived yesterday?”
Nurse Brenda blinked, stepping into the dining hall. “They’re in the locked cabinet in Mr. Moretti’s private study, Mr. Russo. I checked them this morning at six.”
Vincent walked toward the study door adjoining the dining hall, opened it, and stepped inside.
Three seconds later, a sharp curse sounded from inside the room.
Vincent stepped back out into the dining hall, his face pale, holding an open brown leather case that had contained four small glass bottles of Isabella’s custom heart medication—worth eighty thousand dollars, but far more importantly, the only supply of the drug available in the United States for the next four weeks.
The leather case was completely empty.
“They’re gone,” Vincent said, his voice ringing out clearly through the high-vaulted dining hall. “All four custom bottles.”
Lorenzo stood up slowly, setting Isabella down on her chair. The warmth in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, terrifying stillness that made even Vivian step back two inches.
“What do you mean, gone?” Lorenzo asked, his voice low, dry, and sharp as a razor.
“The lock on the cabinet was forced,” Vincent reported, his dark eyes sweeping the room until they landed on the grand foyer doors where Sophia was standing. “The guards at the gate haven't logged any external visitors this morning. Whoever took them is inside this house.”
Vivian pressed one jeweled hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with practiced horror. “Oh, my God... Lorenzo! Those are Isabella’s heart medications! Without them, she... she won't survive the week!”
Isabella looked up at her father, her small face turning pale as she felt the sudden, crushing tension in the room. “Papa?”
Lorenzo walked to the threshold of the dining hall, his gaze falling directly on Sophia Carter, who stood beside her bucket in the foyer, her face completely drained of color.
“Vincent,” Lorenzo commanded quietly. “Search the staff quarters. Every room. Every bag.”
“Boss,” Vincent said, stepping forward. “We don't need to search the whole house. I saw Mrs. Carter in your study twenty minutes ago, carrying her daughter’s bag while you were on the terrace.”
Sophia felt the ground drop out from under her feet. “What?! No! I was never in the study this morning! I was in the lower kitchen getting water!”
“Check the bag, Vincent,” Lorenzo ordered, his voice cold as stone.
Vincent turned toward the foyer bench where three-year-old Emma was sitting.
The toddler looked up with wide, terrified brown eyes as the tall man in the dark suit stepped toward her. She reached out her tiny hands, clutching her pink canvas backpack against her small chest.
“No,” Emma whispered, her voice trembling. “My ducks.”
Vincent did not hesitate. He reached down, snatched the faded pink backpack out of the toddler’s small hands with enough force to break the safety pin holding the zipper, and turned it upside down right in the middle of the marble foyer floor.
The first bottle rolled out of the little pink backpack and struck the marble floor with a delicate glass click.
The second landed beside it.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
By the time Vincent Russo straightened and held the empty backpack open for everyone to see, the enormous hall had become so quiet that Lorenzo Moretti could hear his five-year-old daughter breathing from twenty feet away.
Emma Carter, three years old and barely tall enough to reach the dining table, stared at the four bottles as though someone had dropped four snakes at her feet.
“No,” she whispered, her small chin beginning to tremble violently.
Sophia went as white as a sheet, dropping to her knees on the cold marble floor. “Mr. Moretti, please! I swear to you, on my daughter’s life, I never touched those bottles! I don't even know where the key was!”
Vivian Bellini stepped out into the foyer, pressing her jeweled hand against her chest with an expression of profound, disgust-filled horror. “Those are Isabella’s heart medications. How could anyone... how could you use your own child to hide stolen drugs?”
Lorenzo did not answer immediately.
He stood at the threshold of the walnut dining room, his tall, imposing figure framed by a chandelier that had cost more than most people earned in ten years, looking down at the maid kneeling on the marble, the trembling toddler in the oversized wool coat, and the four brown glass bottles lying between them.
Three weeks earlier, he had caught that same toddler standing on a chair beside his sick daughter’s bed, one tiny hand cupped protectively behind Isabella’s neck while the other held a glass of water, whispering: “Slow. Medicine gets scared if you hurry.”
He had seen his daughter laugh for the first time in three years because of that child.
Now, the evidence lay right at his feet.
Vincent turned one bottle in his palm, his sharp face neutral. “Boss, there’s no mistake. They were meant to be sold on the black market or held for ransom. She knew how valuable they were.”
Emma’s wide brown eyes looked up at Lorenzo through a veil of hot, terrified tears.
“No Emma,” the three-year-old sobbed, touching her small chest with two fingers.
“What did you say?” Lorenzo asked, his voice dropping into a low, dangerously quiet register.
The toddler looked at him with wet, terrified eyes, holding out her empty hands.
“Emma no steal Sister’s heart.”
Before Lorenzo could move, Isabella suddenly pushed away from Nurse Brenda, who was holding her hand near the dining table.
“She didn't!” Isabella screamed.
Her bare feet slapped violently against the marble floor as she ran across the grand foyer. She threw both of her thin arms around Emma’s neck, nearly knocking the smaller child over onto the floor.
“She’s my sister!” Isabella cried frantically, her small face flushing red, tears streaming down her cheeks as she looked up at her father. “Papa, she didn't take anything! She gave me the grass! She wouldn't take my heart!”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened until the muscles near his ears turned to iron.
He had built an empire by refusing to let emotion interfere with evidence. He had survived betrayals, ambushes, federal investigations, and rivals who smiled over dinner while arranging funerals before dessert. He knew how lies sounded. He knew how fear smelled.
He looked at Sophia Carter kneeling on the marble floor.
Her shoulders were shaking, but her eyes were fixed on Vivian Bellini’s face with a look of absolute, terrifying clarity—a look that held no guilt, no shame, only a desperate, silent plea for him to see what was standing right beside him.
Sophia’s lips parted.
She could expose Vivian right now. She could tell Lorenzo about the conversation in the library four nights ago. She could say Vincent’s name.
Then Vivian’s cold blue eyes flicked over toward Emma, who was crying in Isabella’s arms.
Vivian’s hand brushed her silk pocket, where a small pink silk handkerchief protruded—a handkerchief that smelled faintly of sweet jasmine perfume, the exact same jasmine scent that was currently clinging to the strap of Emma’s broken pink backpack.
Sophia closed her mouth.
She realized that if she spoke without proof right now, Vincent’s guards would take her and Emma out of this house before the hour was up, and Isabella would be left alone with the amber bottle.
Lorenzo watched the sudden, heavy silence fall over the maid, and he misunderstood it.
He thought it was the silence of a guilty woman who had been caught and had run out of lies.
That mistake would nearly cost him both little girls.
“Vincent,” Lorenzo said, his voice flat, dead, and colder than the winter sea outside. “Lock Mrs. Carter in the east gable room. Do not let her leave until the police arrive.”
“And the child, Boss?” Vincent asked, a subtle, triumphant light flashing in his dark eyes.
May you like
Lorenzo looked at Isabella, who was clinging to Emma so tightly that her small knuckles were white.
“Leave the child in the west wing with Isabella for now,” Lorenzo said quietly, turning his back on them all. “I will deal with the police myself.”
