Chapter 1
Nobody moved.
The only sound in the breakfast room came from Lucy trying to catch her breath against Vittorio’s shoulder.
Marcus lay beneath the broken map rack, one hand pressed against his mouth.
Bianca sat beside the overturned ottoman.
The confidence had not completely left her face.
That interested Vittorio.
A frightened woman would have apologized.
Bianca only watched him.
Calculating.
Vittorio handed Lucy carefully to Emma.
“Take her upstairs.”
Lucy’s fingers tightened around his lapel.
“No.”
Her voice came out small.
Vittorio looked down.
“You want Daddy with you?”
She nodded.
For one second, everything else in the room stopped mattering.
He carried her himself.
Before leaving, he looked at the bodyguards.
“No one touches Marcus or Bianca.”
Marcus gave a bloody smile.
“Finally thinking?”
Vittorio’s eyes settled on him.
“No.”
His voice was almost gentle.
“I’m making sure you’re still here when I come back.”
Marcus’s smile disappeared.
Upstairs, Lucy refused to change out of her filthy dress until Emma promised Bianca would not enter the room.
Vittorio sat on the floor instead of towering over her.
“Did she do this before?”
Lucy looked at Emma.
Emma’s breath caught.
That tiny reaction was enough.
Vittorio’s head turned slowly.
Emma lowered her eyes.
“Sir…”
“How long?”
Her fingers tightened around the smartphone.
“Three weeks.”
Vittorio did not blink.
Lucy whispered:
“Because I say bad things.”
“What bad things?”
Lucy pressed her lips together.
Emma crouched beside her.
“You don't have to say anything you don't want to.”
The child stared at the floor.
Then:
“Blue door.”
Vittorio’s chest became still.
There was only one blue door in the Romano estate.
Elena’s old private study.
Lucy’s mother had died eighteen months earlier.
The room had remained locked ever since.
Vittorio kept the key.
Nobody entered.
Not even him.
“What about the blue door?”
Lucy looked toward the hallway before answering.
“I saw Uncle Marcus come out.”
Vittorio’s thumb stopped moving over his signet ring.
Emma's eyes filled with fear.
Then she unlocked her phone again.
“There’s more on the video.”
She skipped backward.
Bianca’s voice came through the speaker.
Not mocking now.
Cold.
“Tell your father you lied about the blue door, and you can eat.”
The room went silent.
Lucy had not been punished because she behaved badly.
She had been starved and humiliated because somebody needed a three-year-old to change her story.
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And at the end of the recording, Marcus’s voice could be heard from behind the camera.
“Keep going until she says it.”
