Chapter 3 - The Ghost on the Third Floor
The sun had set, plunging the Duca estate into a deep, velvety darkness pierced only by the sweep of security floodlights.
In the third-floor hallway, the night shift had just begun. Two armed guards stood silently outside Lucas’s door, rotating positions every two hours. Inside the room, the dim amber glow of a single bedside lamp cast long, eerie shadows across the rows of medicine bottles.
Lucas was awake. He was always awake these days. Pain had become a permanent resident in his joints, a dull, throbbing ache that refused to yield to the morphine patches the doctors changed twice a day.
He clutched Captain tight against his chest. The bear’s missing eye felt like a hard, plastic socket against Lucas’s thumb.
"Captain," Lucas whispered into the dark, his voice raspy from disuse. "Do you think Mom is in the stars?"
The heart monitor beeped. Pip. Pip. Pip.
The door to the room clicked open. It wasn't a doctor, and it wasn't his father.
A small, stumbling shadow slipped through the crack in the door.
Lucas blinked, startled. Standing by the edge of the rug was a toddler wearing footie pajamas decorated with little green dinosaurs. It was Mateo. Earlier that evening, while the kitchen staff was distracted by a delivery of fresh provisions, Mateo had managed to push open the heavy service door at the end of the second-floor corridor, crawled up the winding back staircase, and followed the soft hum of the medical equipment straight to the forbidden room.
Mateo looked around with wide, curious eyes. He didn't seem afraid of the blinking lights, the IV stands, or the pale, skeletal boy lying in the massive bed. To Mateo, the room was just a new playground to explore.
"Hey," Lucas whispered, his eyes wide. "You're not supposed to be in here. The guards will get you."
Mateo ignored the warning. He waddled across the room on chubby legs, his pajamas rustling softly. He stopped right beside the bed, reached up with both hands, and grabbed the wooden frame, pulling himself up onto his tiptoes to peer over the mattress.
Lucas stared down at him. He had not seen another child in three years. His cousins had stopped visiting long ago, warned away by Lorenzo’s dangerous lifestyle and the sterile quarantine of the estate.
Mateo tilted his head, studying Lucas’s pale, drawn face. Then, with the unhesitating innocence of a two-year-old, Mateo reached out and poked Lucas firmly in the cheek with an index finger.
Lucas gasped, half in surprise, half in a strange, unexpected chuckle. "What are you doing?"
Mateo giggled, highly amused by the sound of Lucas’s voice. He then hoisted his heavy little body up, scrambled clumsily over the edge of the mattress, and crawled right onto the bed.
"No, wait—get down, you'll knock over my tubes!" Lucas protested weakly, trying to push him away, but he had no strength.
Instead of breaking anything, Mateo crawled right up to Lucas’s chest, settled down like a small, warm loaf of bread, and pressed his face against Captain the teddy bear. Mateo reached out and wrapped his chubby arms around the worn-out toy, claiming it instantly as his own.
Lucas froze. For a terrifying second, he thought the weight of the toddler might crush his fragile ribs. But as he looked down, feeling the steady, robust heat radiating from Mateo’s tiny body, something inside his chest shifted. It wasn't the cold, mechanical rhythm of the heart monitor. It was a fierce, living warmth.
Mateo looked up at Lucas, let out a happy little sigh, and closed his eyes, falling fast asleep within seconds.
Lucas lay frozen beneath him, afraid to move, afraid to breathe too loudly. For the first time in three years, the constant, clawing pain in his chest seemed to recede just a fraction, swallowed up by the simple, heavy comfort of another human being resting against his heart.
Outside the door, heavy footsteps approached.
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Lucas’s eyes widened in terror. If the guards found a toddler sleeping in his bed, Rosa would be fired, and perhaps worse.
With a burst of adrenaline he didn't know he possessed, Lucas carefully maneuvered his thin arms around Mateo, shielding him beneath the thick wool blanket just as the door handle turned.
