Chapter 4 - The Room Upstairs
The guest suite was on the second floor.
It had cream-colored walls, a fireplace, and windows overlooking Lake Michigan. It was larger than Sofia’s entire apartment.
That made Sofia uncomfortable.
She spent the first night sitting upright in a chair beside Emma’s bed, fully dressed, as if she expected someone to tell them they had overstayed their welcome.
Adrian understood the feeling.
The estate had once been full of people who belonged there.
Now it was full of ghosts.
The next morning, Rosa brought pancakes shaped like flowers.
Emma stared at them as though they were magic.
“Are these for me?”
“They are,” Rosa said.
Emma looked at Sofia.
“Can we afford them?”
Sofia’s face crumpled.
Adrian turned away before they saw his expression.
Later, he found Emma in the eastern garden.
This time, she wore warm boots and a purple coat Rosa had bought for her.
She was kneeling beside a patch of soil, speaking softly to the dead sunflowers.
Adrian stood at the gate.
“May I come in?”
Emma looked up.
“You have to ask the flowers too.”
“All right.”
He stepped through the rusted gate and looked down at the dark earth.
“May I come in?” he asked solemnly.
Emma considered it.
“They said yes.”
Adrian sat on the stone bench.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then Emma pointed toward the mansion.
“Why is that room always locked?”
Adrian went still.
“Which room?”
“The pink one.”
His chest tightened.
“You saw it?”
“Just the door.”
Emma hugged Daisy closer.
“Is somebody sleeping in there?”
“No.”
“Then why can’t they come out?”
Adrian looked toward the house.
He had spent three years believing that keeping Claire’s room untouched meant keeping her close.
But all it had really done was trap him inside the day she died.
“My daughter used to sleep there,” he said.
Emma’s eyes widened.
“You have a daughter?”
“I did.”
“Where is she now?”
Adrian’s throat closed.
“She’s with your daddy. And my wife.”
Emma thought about that.
“Do they know each other?”
“I hope so.”
“Then Claire can tell my daddy about the flowers.”
Adrian looked at the child.
“Maybe she can.”
Emma took a sunflower seed from her pocket.
“I found this in Mommy’s bag,” she said. “Can we plant it?”
Adrian had not touched the garden since Elena died.
He had not allowed anyone to plant anything there.
But he looked at Emma’s small hand, at the seed resting in her palm.
“Yes,” he said.
They planted it together.
That night, Sofia found Adrian outside Claire’s locked bedroom.
He stood in the hallway with a key in his hand.
“You don’t have to do it,” Sofia said quietly.
He looked at her.
“Do what?”
“Open that door.”
“I think I do.”
Sofia stepped closer, but not too close.
“Grief isn’t a locked room, Mr. Moretti. You can’t keep it contained forever.”
He let out a slow breath.
“You sound like you know.”
“My husband died eighteen months ago. Some days I still set a place for him at the table without thinking.”
Adrian’s eyes lowered.
“I’m sorry.”
Sofia looked surprised.
It was the first time he had apologized to her for anything.
He inserted the key.
The lock clicked.
For a moment, he couldn’t move.
Then Sofia reached past him and gently opened the door.
Dust floated through the beam of hallway light.
The room was exactly as Adrian remembered it.
Pink curtains.
Stuffed animals.
A tiny bed.
Yellow rain boots beneath the window.
Emma stepped out from behind Sofia and looked inside.
“Can I say hi?”
Adrian’s voice was rough. “Yes.”
Emma walked into Claire’s room.
She did not touch anything.
She simply placed Daisy on the bed beside Claire’s old teddy bear.
Then she whispered, “Hi, Claire. I’m Emma. Your daddy misses you a lot.”
Adrian broke.
He turned toward the wall, but Sofia saw his shoulders shake.
For three years, no one had been allowed to speak Claire’s name.
A three-year-old child had done it in one sentence.
Then the security alarm sounded.
Marcus’s voice came through the hallway speaker.
“Adrian. We have a breach at the south gate.”
Adrian’s tears vanished.
Stone returned.
But when he reached the security office, Marcus was waiting with a grim expression.
“We caught one of them,” Marcus said.
“Who?”
“A man who worked for Vincent Barone.”
Adrian looked at the monitor.
The captured man was bleeding from the mouth, tied to a chair in the underground holding room.
“He says he has information about Luca Romano,” Marcus continued.
Adrian’s eyes became cold.
“Bring Sofia nowhere near this.”
Then he walked downstairs.
Because someone had just entered his world.
May you like
And Adrian Moretti was done letting innocent people die inside it.
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