Chapter 9 – THE MUSIC BOX PLAYING A DEADLY TUNE

I stared at the note, the heavy cardstock shaking in my hands.

Adrian was only the middleman, Sophie.

I reached out and slowly cranked the small brass handle on the side of the wooden music box.

The gears clicked, and a delicate, haunting melody began to play.

It was a lullaby. Clair de Lune.

My lungs seized. I couldn’t breathe.

This was the exact lullaby my father used to play for me on a cheap plastic keyboard before he died.

“Sophie?”

I jumped, dropping the note.

Luca was standing in the doorway of the dining room, holding two coffee mugs. He looked at the shattered glass on the floor, then at the music box playing on the table.

His eyes immediately hardened. He set the mugs down and walked quickly toward me.

“Don’t touch it,” he ordered, pulling my hand away from the box. He leaned over, inspecting the carved wood without touching it. “Who brought this in here?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “It was just sitting here.”

Luca picked up the note from the floor. He read it, his jaw clenching so tight I could see the muscle ticking in his cheek.

“Daniel,” Luca yelled over his shoulder.

Daniel ran into the room seconds later, his suit wrinkled, a heavy bandage wrapped around his head from the fight on the catwalk.

“Lock down the estate,” Luca barked. “No one leaves. No one enters. Someone bypassed the perimeter.”

“Boss, that’s impossible,” Daniel said, looking at the music box. “I’ve had men on every gate since the police left.”

“Then they didn’t come through the gate,” Luca said coldly. He turned to me. “You recognize the song?”

I nodded, tears pricking my eyes. “It’s my father’s lullaby. The one he played for me before… before he died.”

Luca stared at the music box. The melody slowly wound down to a halt.

“Your father was Marcus Bennett,” Luca said quietly, piecing the puzzle together in real-time. “He was my father’s hitman. My father ordered him killed.”

“That’s what my mother said,” I replied.

Luca shook his head. “If Adrian was just a middleman… who funded him? Who gave him the resources to infiltrate my security, buy off my guards, and kidnap Thomas?”

“Someone with deep pockets,” Daniel noted.

“And a deep grudge against the Moretti family,” Luca finished.

He looked at me.

“Sophie, where did your mother get the money to buy that warehouse?”

My stomach dropped. I had never thought about it. My mother lived on a meager teacher’s pension. I sent her a portion of my paycheck every month just to help with groceries.

“She didn’t have any money,” I said.

“She had enough to buy commercial real estate under a shell company,” Luca countered gently. “Someone bankrolled her. Someone bankrolled Adrian.”

Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.

I pulled it out.

It was a text message from a blocked number.

If you want to know who is pulling the strings, come to Room 402 at St. Jude’s Hospital. Come alone. Or the boy pays the price.

Attached to the message was a photograph.

It was a picture of Noah, sitting at the kitchen island eating pancakes.

Taken from the bushes outside the kitchen window less than five minutes ago.

I gasped, dropping the phone on the table.

Luca snatched it up, looked at the photo, and immediately drew his weapon. He sprinted toward the kitchen.

“Thomas! Get Noah away from the window!” Luca’s voice echoed through the halls.

I stood paralyzed. Room 402. That was the room my mother was supposed to be in before I found out she had faked her surgery.

I looked at the music box. I looked at the broken glass.

I didn’t tell Luca. I knew if I told him, he would turn the hospital into a warzone. And the text said if I didn’t come alone, Noah would die.

I slipped out the service doors, stole the keys to the catering van, and drove to St. Jude’s Hospital.

The hospital was quiet, humming with fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic.

I rode the elevator to the fourth floor, my heart hammering in my ears.

Room 402.

The door was slightly ajar.

I pushed it open.

The hospital bed was empty, the sheets perfectly made.

Sitting in a vinyl visitor’s chair by the window was an old man in a tailored suit. He had a cane resting against his knee, and a fedora sitting on his lap.

He looked up at me and smiled warmly.

“Hello, Sophie,” he said.

In his wrinkled hands, he was holding a child’s drawing. The exact same drawing of Adrian and Thomas that Adrian had shown us at the shipyard.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice shaking.

The old man sighed, carefully folding the drawing.

“I am the man who hired your father thirty years ago,” he said softly. “And I am the man who saved him when Carlo Moretti tried to kill him.”

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