Chapter 3 - The Footsteps on the Stairs
It was 4:12 in the morning when three-year-old Lina woke up.
She did not wake up because of a bad dream or the sound of the cold November wind howling against the third-floor window panes. She woke up because Biscotti, the calico cat, had jumped onto her narrow bed, purring loudly and nuzzling her cheek with a cold, wet nose.
"Biscotti..." Lina giggled softly, rubbing her eyes with her small fists. She was wearing her favorite fleece pajamas—pink with white stars—and her untied wool socks were falling off her tiny feet.
The cat jumped off the bed, walked toward the half-open bedroom door, and let out a small, questioning mew.
Lina slid off the bed, her bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor without a sound. Her mother, Lucia, lay fast asleep in the twin bed across the small room, her face pale, exhausted from seven years of endless scrubbing, folding, and worrying.
Lina didn't wake her mother. Children live in a world of immediate curiosity. Biscotti was walking into the dark hallway, and Lina wanted to follow her playmate.
She padded silently down the carpeted hallway of the third floor. The house was pitch black, save for the blue moonlight streaming through the grand arched windows on the landing.
As she reached the top of the grand staircase, she heard a sound.
It was not a normal house sound. It was the heavy, uneven dragging sound of a shoe—thump, drag, thump, drag.
Lina peeked through the dark mahogany balusters of the staircase. Down on the second-floor gallery, she saw a man walking slowly toward Damiano’s study. It was Carlo, the man who brought the warm milk in the mornings. But he wasn't carrying milk. He was carrying a long, dark object in his right hand—a heavy brass crowbar.
Lina watched him slide the key into Damiano’s walnut desk, open the middle drawer, and pull out the small wooden box. With a brutal wrench of the crowbar, Carlo smashed the brass lock open, greedily reaching inside for the offshore bank ledgers and bearer bonds hidden within.
Lina tilted her head. She knew that drawer was secret. She had seen Signor Damiano touch that brass key every day.
Biscotti sneezed softly from the shadows near Lina’s feet.
Carlo froze instantly. He whipped around, his hand drawing a silenced pistol from his coat, his eyes darting frantically toward the grand staircase.
"Who's there?" Carlo hissed into the dark, his voice sharp and lethal.
Lina didn't move. She was a quiet child by nature, used to hiding in corners while her mother worked. She shrank back into the thick shadows behind the velvet curtains at the top of the landing, holding Biscotti tightly against her chest.
Carlo watched the staircase for twenty seconds, his weapon raised, his breath coming in fast, nervous gasps. Hearing nothing more than the howling wind outside, he grunted, shoved the paper ledgers into his coat, and walked toward the basement stairs.
"Need to clear the ledger transfer before five," Carlo muttered to himself, his limping steps fading down the hall. "Then I toss the maid and her brat into the Sound."
Lina waited until the dragging sound of his foot vanished down the service corridor.
She did not understand what "toss into the Sound" meant, but she understood fear. She had felt the cold, sharp energy radiating from the man with the limp. And more than that, she knew where Signor Damiano always was when the house was dark and quiet.
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He was downstairs.
She stepped out from behind the curtain, her tiny hand clutching Biscotti, and began her slow, silent descent down the monumental stone stairs, heading into the dark bowels of the estate.
