Chapter 3 – THE FIRE IN THE CRAYON DRAWING

Michael stood up so fast his chair crashed backward onto the floor.

He stared at the blue crayon drawing in my hands, all the color draining from his face.

“No,” Michael choked out, stumbling backward. “No, that’s impossible.”

Luca took the drawing from me, his eyes scanning the crude picture of the burning house.

“Mike,” Luca said softly. “What is this? What fire?”

Michael was hyperventilating, pressing his hands against his temples.

His wife, Elena, rushed to his side, grabbing his arms. “Michael, breathe. Just breathe.”

Vanessa let out a triumphant, cruel laugh.

“Go on, Michael,” she taunted. “Tell your perfect, protective older brother what you did when you were ten years old. Tell him why Daddy had to pay two million dollars to make the problem go away.”

“Shut up, Vanessa!” Luca roared, the sheer volume of his voice making several guests flinch.

He turned back to his brother. “Mike. Look at me.”

Michael looked up, tears streaming down his face.

“The summer house,” Michael whispered. “In Lake Forest. Twenty years ago.”

Luca’s brow furrowed. “The summer house burned down because of a faulty gas line.”

“No,” Michael sobbed. “I was playing in the basement. I found a box of fireworks. I lit one. I couldn’t put it out. The curtains caught fire. I ran outside and hid in the woods.”

Elena pulled her husband tightly against her chest as he broke down.

Luca stared at him, stunned. “You were ten. Why didn’t Dad tell me?”

“Because someone was still inside the house,” Giovanni said quietly.

The room fell deadly still.

Giovanni looked at me. His eyes were filled with an unbearable weight.

“Your grandfather, Emily. He was the groundskeeper. He was asleep in the basement apartment.”

My breath caught in my throat.

My grandfather died before I was born. My mother always told me he passed away in a tragic accident at a construction site.

“He died in the fire?” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

Giovanni nodded slowly.

Vanessa stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with malice.

“Exactly,” she said smoothly. “Little Michael burned a man alive. And Enzo Moretti paid Rosa two million dollars to take her family and disappear, so his precious son wouldn’t be labeled a murderer.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

I looked at Michael, the man I had spent the last eleven months serving. The man I had just risked my job to protect.

He had killed my grandfather.

“I’m so sorry,” Michael wept, falling to his knees. “I didn’t know he was down there! I swear to God, I didn’t know!”

Luca looked devastated. He looked at his brother, then at me.

He didn’t know how to fix this.

But as I looked at the drawing in Luca’s hand, something didn’t make sense.

I stepped closer to Luca.

“Sir,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “May I see the drawing again?”

Luca handed it to me without a word.

I studied the blue crayon lines. The handwriting at the bottom.

Michael did it.

I looked up at Vanessa.

“You said Michael drew this?” I asked.

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Obviously. A guilty conscience.”

“My grandmother kept all my childhood drawings,” I said quietly. “I know how children draw. I know how they write.”

I turned the paper over.

“Look at the letter ‘M’ in Michael,” I said, pointing to the thick blue wax. “It’s sharp. Precise. A ten-year-old boy in a state of panic doesn’t write with perfect cursive loops.”

Luca leaned in, his eyes narrowing at the handwriting.

“And look at the flames,” I continued. “They aren’t drawn from the basement up. They’re drawn starting from the roof down.”

Giovanni’s head snapped up.

“The fire marshal’s report,” Giovanni whispered, “said the accelerant was poured in the attic. Not the basement.”

Luca turned toward Giovanni, his jaw clenching.

“If the fire started in the attic,” Luca said slowly, “then Michael didn’t start it.”

I looked back at the drawing, running my thumb over the corner of the paper.

Underneath the heavy blue wax of the fire, I saw something else.

A faint, embossed stamp pressed into the expensive stationery.

I tilted it into the light of the chandelier.

It was a logo.

A snake wrapped around a sword.

Vanessa gasped, stepping back so fast she tripped over the hem of her gown.

“Where did you get this paper, Vanessa?” Luca asked, his voice deadly calm.

Because I knew that logo.

It was the same logo engraved on the heavy gold ring Vanessa’s father wore on his right hand.