Chapter 2 - The Drawings in the Dark
"Upstairs," Grace whispered suddenly, breaking the suffocating silence. Her voice was steady, carrying an authority that startled me. "Dominic. Get them upstairs now."
It was the first time she had ever used my first name.
I didn't argue. The underworld boss who ruled half of Long Island took orders from a twenty-nine-year-old housekeeper without hesitation. I scooped Nora into my left arm and extended my right hand. For the first time in fourteen months, Olivia and Sophie took it.
We moved quietly up the sweeping grand staircase and into the girls’ nursery suite. Grace immediately closed the heavy oak doors, drew the blackout curtains, and turned the deadbolt.
"How long have you known they could talk, Grace?" I demanded, keeping my voice low as the girls huddled on Olivia’s canopy bed.
"They didn't talk. Not until twenty minutes before you came home," Grace said, turning to face me. There was no fear in her gray eyes, only a fierce, maternal resolve. "They’ve been humming for weeks while we baked bread. Small notes. Whispers to their stuffed animals. Today, Nora dropped a jar of preserves. It shattered. She gasped and said, 'Sorry.' Once she realized the world didn't end, the dam broke."
Grace walked over to Nora’s bed, knelt, and pulled a flat wooden box from beneath the cedar slats. She set it on the vanity and lifted the lid.
Inside were dozens of sheets of sketch paper covered in colored pencil and crayon.
"They didn't speak with words, Mr. Romano," Grace said softly. "They spoke with these. Look."
I stepped forward, my hands trembling as I picked up the drawings.
The first was a sketch of a playground surrounded by orange trees. A woman in a red coat lay on the pavement. Beside her was a green utility van. Drawn in the driver’s seat was a figure in a bright yellow windbreaker.
On the figure’s wrist, drawn in heavy gold crayon, was a thick watch with a dark blue dial.
My breath hitched.
The Rolex Submariner with the lapis lazuli face. I had given it to Marcus Kane myself for his fortieth birthday, engraved on the back: *Brothers Through Fire.*
"Why didn't you bring this to me weeks ago?" I asked, my voice dangerously tight.
"Look at the bottom corner of that drawing, Dominic," Grace said quietly.
I turned the page toward the lamp. In the bottom right corner, drawn in black crayon, was a large, imposing house. And standing at the front gates, holding a rifle, was the same man with the gold watch.
"They thought he owned this house," Grace said, her eyes glistening. "They thought if they told you, he would kill you too. They stayed quiet to keep you alive."
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I sank onto a footstool, staring at my three babies. They weren't broken. They weren't lost in trauma. They had been fighting a silent war for over a year to protect their father.
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