Chapter 2 - The Sovereignty of Small Steps
The little girl did not retreat. She did not drop her gaze to the Persian rug, nor did she fidget with the lace hem of her handmade dress.
Instead, she took two small, curious steps closer to the high-backed leather chair, resting one hand against the carved leg of the desk as if she had every right in the world to be standing within arm's reach of the most feared man on the northern seaboard.
"Nobody," she answered.
Her tone was so matter-of-fact, so completely innocent of protocol or danger, that the heavy, suffocating aura of the study seemed to warp around her.
Damian leaned back slowly. The black leather of his executive chair groaned beneath his broad frame. His eyes traveled from her messy curls down to the woolen socks on her feet, then past her to the heavy, four-inch-thick walnut double doors of the study. The doors were ajar by barely three inches.
To reach this room, she had to navigate the servants’ gallery, cross the grand marble foyer, bypass the electronic security console in the main hall, and climb two flights of a sweeping, cantilevered staircase that had caused visiting senators to feel vertigo.
"How did you get upstairs?" Damian asked, his voice low, steady, and devoid of the theatrical menace he used in boardrooms, replaced by genuine, bewildered curiosity.
The girl blinked, her hazel eyes wide with mild astonishment that an adult could ask such an obvious question.
"The stairs," she said simply.
A faint, microscopic twitch occurred at the left corner of Damian’s mouth.
It was not a smile—Damian Marchetti had not smiled in nearly a decade—but it was the ghost of one, a momentary softening of the scar tissue around his jaw. In a world populated by advisors who spoke in three-paragraph circumlocutions, corrupt judges who veiled their greed in legal Latin, and capos who measured every breath before offering an opinion, here was an answer stripped of all deceit.
The stairs.
"The stairs have thirty-four steps," Damian observed, his hand resting flat against the leather blotter, fingers curled slightly over his pen.
"I know," she said, nodding solemnly. "I had to count them so I wouldn't drop the ribbon. The big runner on the middle landing has a little bump in the red part. I almost slipped, but I held onto the bannister."
"You shouldn't be wandering around this house in your socks," Damian said, his voice dropping into a measured cadence. "There are guards outside. There are cameras. There are places in this house where people do not go."
"I was looking for your tree," she replied, completely ignoring his lecture on perimeter security. She pointed her small, pale finger toward the towering balsam fir in the corner. "Ours is in the kitchen. It’s small. It fits in a coffee can. Yours is bigger than the ceiling at church."
Damian looked at the tree. To him, it was merely an obligation—an annual order executed by the groundskeepers to ensure the estate maintained a semblance of civic decorum for the local charities he funded. He had not looked at the lights once since they were plugged in three days ago.
"Who made the dress?" Damian asked abruptly, his gaze returning to the coarse, hand-sewn flannel.
"Mommy," she said proudly, smoothing the skirt over her knees with both hands. "She worked on it after she cleaned the silver rooms. It took four nights. She said red is the bravest color for Christmas."
Damian’s eyes drifted back to the small red box sitting beside his whiskey. The gold ribbon was lopsided, tied with clumsy fingers that had clearly tried three or four times to make the loops even.
May you like
"And who told you to bring that here?" Damian asked, his gaze narrowing slightly, the old, ingrained paranoia of his trade surfacing for a fraction of a second. "Did someone give you that box to deliver to my desk?"
"No," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "I brought it."
