The Other Child
Chapter 05 - The Other Child
There are sentences that do not enter the mind all at once.
They break in slowly, like cold under a door.
The little girl is not the only child hidden in your house.
I read the line three times. Each time, the words rearranged nothing and destroyed more.
Claire stood near the vanity, one hand on the back of a white chair, her face carefully blank. That carefulness frightened me. A frightened woman reacts. A practiced one disappears while standing in front of you.
“Do you know what this means?” I asked.
“No.”
This time I believed her.
Marco moved to the door and began giving orders into his earpiece. Search every wing. Check guest rooms, staff rooms, service closets, pantry storage, wine cellar, laundry, garages. No one leaves. No one enters. Quietly.
Enzo looked as if ten years had settled onto his shoulders.
“Sir,” he said, “we have visiting staff in the house. Musicians, florists, waiters, photographers—”
“And one child,” I said.
His mouth closed.
I wheeled myself out of the bridal suite before anyone could decide to help. The hallway was long, polished, and lined with flowers paid for by a bride who might be hostage, traitor, victim, or all three. My chair moved over the marble with a soft mechanical whisper. I hated that sound.
Claire walked beside me.
“You should stay with Sophie,” I said.
“I will when I know what this is.”
“You have a talent for ignoring orders.”
“You have a talent for giving them badly.”
A corner of my mouth moved before I could stop it.
She saw it, and for one moment we were sixteen again beside a lake, before fathers and bullets and poverty and empires taught us what human beings could cost one another.
Then a guard appeared at the end of the hall.
“Mr. Vitali. Pantry storage.”
Claire and I reached the service level with Marco behind us. Outside the pantry, Mrs. Alvarez held Sophie against her hip despite the child being far too large to carry comfortably. Sophie’s face was pale.
“There’s a boy,” she whispered.
Inside the pantry, behind stacked crates of champagne and unopened boxes of linen napkins, sat a little boy in a gray sweater. He could not have been more than four. He clutched a toy car in one hand and a half-eaten roll in the other.
When he saw us, he stood quickly.
“I didn’t steal it,” he said.
His voice was very small.
Claire made a sound no one else might have heard. Mothers hear hunger differently.
She crouched first.
“No one thinks you stole it.”
The boy looked at my chair, then at my face, then at Sophie.
Sophie stepped forward with grave diplomacy.
“I had cake.”
The boy’s eyes widened.
Sophie looked at Mrs. Alvarez. “Can he have emergency cake too?”
Mrs. Alvarez burst into tears.
I looked at Marco because looking at the child too long would show more than I wanted shown.
“Who is he?”
The boy answered before Marco could.
“My name is Nico.”
Claire’s body stiffened.
“Nico what?” she asked softly.
“Nico Bellini.”
The name moved through the room like a blade.
Bianca’s family name was Santoro. Bellini belonged to another old line: dangerous, moneyed, and tied to Raffaele through deals I had never liked but had tolerated because tolerance is sometimes disguised fatigue.
“Nico,” I said, keeping my voice gentle. “Who brought you here?”
He looked at the toy car.
“A lady in a big white dress told me to hide until Mommy came.”
Bianca.
Claire’s eyes lifted to mine.
“Who is your mother?” I asked.
The boy swallowed.
“My mommy’s name is Marina.”
Bianca’s sister.
The sister she had begged me to help.
My phone rang.
Raffaele’s name appeared on the screen.
I let it ring twice.
Then I answered.
“Cousin,” Raffaele said warmly, as if the day had not opened its throat. “I hear the ceremony was delayed.”
I looked at the little boy hidden among the champagne crates.
“Where is Bianca?”
A pause.
“The bride changed her mind. Women do that.”
“Where is Marina Bellini?”
This time the pause lasted longer.
When Raffaele spoke again, the warmth was gone.
“Careful, Lorenzo. You are collecting things today that do not belong to you.”
I watched Sophie hand Nico her stuffed rabbit.
“They belong to themselves.”
Raffaele laughed softly.
“Still sentimental. The chair didn’t cure that?”
Claire stood.
My hand tightened around the phone.
Raffaele continued. “Give me the boy, give me the maid, and I’ll give you the bride before dinner.”
Claire went white.
There it was.
Not Bianca. Not the wedding. Not even humiliation.
This had been about Claire from the beginning.
“Why do you want Claire Bennett?” I asked.
Another small laugh.
“Because she heard what she should not have heard. And because her little girl has something that belongs to me.”
May you like
Across the pantry, Sophie hugged her rabbit tighter.
Then the toy inside its soft belly beeped once.
