Chapter 4 - The Drawing onpex the Kitchen Floor
Adrien picked up the heavy piece of paper, his eyes narrowing as he studied the crude, childlike lines.
To anyone else, it looked like the imaginative scribble of a toddler who had seen a strange man on the grounds. But Adrien Romano did not believe in coincidences. Children saw things adults walked right past. They didn't filter details through politics or fear; they recorded what their eyes absorbed.
“Zoe,” Adrien murmured, his voice low and steady as he crouched beside the sofa.
The little girl stirred, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and blinking up at him through the dim light of the bedside lamp.
“Mister?” she yawned, clutching her one-eared teddy bear to her chest.
“Did you draw this?” Adrien asked, holding up the black-crayon sketch of the man at the gate.
Zoe sat up, peering at the paper. A shadow of apprehension crossed her small face, as if she thought she had done something wrong again. She nodded slowly.
“The bad man,” she whispered, glancing nervously toward the window as if he might still be out there.
Adrien’s heart rate didn't spike—fear was a luxury he had excised from his nervous system years ago—but every instinct honed in the alleyways and boardrooms of Chicago surged to the surface.
“Tell me where you saw him, Zoe,” Adrien said, his tone softening just enough to keep her from shutting down. “Take your time. Was it today? Yesterday?”
“ Two days ago,” Zoe said, holding up two fingers with solemn importance. “Mama was sleeping. My tummy was hungry. I went to the big glass window by the big kitchen. I wanted a cracker.”
She pointed a small finger at the paper.
“The tall man was by the back gate where the noisy cars go out. He had a shiny thing on his coat. Right here.” She tapped the spot where the jagged double-V was drawn. “And he talked to the man with the silver hair. The uncle who gives me candy sometimes.”
Adrien’s breath caught in his throat.
The man with the silver hair.
There was only one man in the entire Romano estate with silver hair who had access to the back service gate encryption codes.
Vance.
Head of estate security. The man Adrien had trusted for twelve years. The man who had just taken his call twenty minutes ago without a single quiver in his voice.
“Did the uncle give you candy, Zoe?” Adrien asked, his voice dangerously smooth.
“Uh-huh,” Zoe nodded, yawning again. “A red one. But Mama said never take candy from strangers, so I put it in the trash can by the sink.”
Adrien stood up slowly.
The peace treaty in New York hadn't been a surrender. It had been a feint. Moretti hadn't folded; he had bought his way inside the Greystone perimeter through a traitor willing to trade the Romano empire for a retirement fund in the Caymans.
And they had planned to make their move tonight while Adrien was supposedly asleep in the east wing, exhausted from travel.
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Only, Adrien hadn't gone to sleep.
And a three-year-old girl who couldn't sleep because her mother was sick had been looking out the kitchen window at midnight two days ago.
