Chapter 1
Rocco did not look at Preston again.
He crouched beside Elliot.
Fruit punch had soaked through the little boy’s shirt and stained one sleeve pink. Elliot was crying silently now, staring at the clockwork drummer still in Mason’s hands.
Rocco held out his palm.
“Mason.”
The eight-year-old immediately brought him the toy.
“I didn't know.”
Victoria stepped forward.
“Mason, don't apologize.”
The boy looked embarrassed.
“But Mom, he said it was his.”
“It belongs to this house.”
Rocco slowly looked up.
“What does that mean?”
Victoria crossed her arms.
“It came from the museum collection.”
“No.”
Rocco took the drummer.
He turned it over.
Along the wooden base was a thin scratch shaped like a crescent.
Rocco knew it instantly.
His late wife, Celeste, had dropped the toy while repairing it at their kitchen table three years earlier.
The drummer had belonged to her as a child.
When she became sick, she gave it to Elliot.
Rocco remembered her winding it one final time while their son sat on her hospital bed.
Elliot had been too young to understand why his mother was crying.
After Celeste died, the toy remained inside a glass-front cabinet in Elliot’s bedroom.
Until several months ago, when it disappeared.
Household staff assumed it had been misplaced during renovations.
Rocco looked at Victoria.
“How did something from my son’s bedroom end up here?”
Her expression changed.
Preston pushed himself upright among scattered toys.
“You're making a family crisis out of garbage.”
Elliot looked at him.
“It’s Mommy’s.”
The room fell quiet again.
Rocco’s anger became colder.
He turned to the museum director.
“Lock every collection room.”
Preston laughed.
“You don't control this place by yourself.”
“No.”
Rocco handed the drummer carefully back to Elliot.
“But until I know why my son’s belongings are being taken from his room, neither do you.”
Mason walked toward Elliot.
“I'm sorry.”
Victoria grabbed her son’s shoulder.
“Mason.”
He pulled away from her.
“I didn't know it was his.”
Elliot looked down at the drummer.
Then at Mason.
“I know.”
Rocco noticed something.
May you like
The children had resolved in ten seconds what the adults had turned into humiliation and violence.
Which meant whatever was happening inside the museum had never really been about two boys fighting over a toy.
