Chapter 6 - The Unseen Detail
Days turned into a week, and the dynamic within the Duca estate underwent a seismic shift.
Mateo became a permanent fixture on the third floor. While Lorenzo attended to his brutal business affairs downstairs, Rosa spent her afternoons in Lucas’s room, tending to the sick boy while Mateo played with blocks on the carpet.
Remarkably, something miraculous seemed to be happening.
Dr. Vance, during his weekly examination, stood over Lucas’s bed with a look of utter bewilderment on his face, tapping the digital readout on the heart monitor.
"His resting heart rate has stabilized by twelve beats per minute," Dr. Vance murmured, flipping through his charts. "His appetite is improving. The persistent low-grade fever we've battled for six months has completely vanished. It defies all medical logic."
Lucas didn't tell the doctor about Mateo. He didn't tell him how every afternoon, the toddler would climb onto the bed, press his warm little hand against Lucas’s chest, and chatter away about imaginary dogs and red trucks. Lucas felt stronger. He had even managed to sit up unassisted for twenty minutes yesterday.
However, beneath the domestic peace, dark forces were gathering outside the iron gates.
Lorenzo’s rivals—the Moretti syndicate—had grown restless. They believed Lorenzo was weakening, distracted by his son's lingering deathbed.
Late one night, in the basement bunker beneath the estate, Lorenzo stood over a large tactical map of the city alongside his most trusted capo, Franco.
"They're moving on our shipping docks in Brooklyn tomorrow night, boss," Franco said, his face grim in the harsh overhead light. "They think we're vulnerable. They think your mind is entirely occupied with the boy upstairs."
Lorenzo’s eyes flashed with lethal coldness. "Let them think whatever they want. Double the guards at the gates. And Franco?"
"Yes, boss?"
"If a single hair on anyone's head in this house is harmed—especially on the third floor—leave no survivors."
Upstairs, unaware of the impending war raging outside, Lucas lay awake in the quiet dark. Mateo was sleeping soundly beside him, clutching Captain.
Lucas reached for his small green notebook on the bedside table. He picked up his crayon and wrote in his neat, slanting letters: Today I sat up by myself. Mateo brought me a red block. I don't think I am going to die anymore.
He closed the notebook, but as he did, his sleeve caught on the edge of the wooden bedside table, tipping over a small, heavy silver tray holding the dozens of prescription pill bottles Dr. Vance had prescribed over the past year.
The bottles spilled across the floor with a soft plastic clatter.
Lucas winced, leaning over the edge of the bed to pick them up before Mateo woke up. As he gathered the bottles, his hand brushed against the dark, narrow space between the nightstand and the heavy oak baseboard.
His fingers hooked into something wedged deep in the dust.
It was a small, flat object made of metal and glass. Lucas pulled it out into the amber light of the lamp.
It was an old, cracked pocket-sized voice recorder—the kind investigators used in the nineties. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, pushed so far back behind the furniture that nobody had ever noticed it during the daily hospital cleanings.
May you like
Lucas frowned, turning the device over in his thin fingers. Etched into the back of the metal casing were two initials: I.D.
Isabella Duca. His mother.
