Chapter 8 - The Relic in the Crimson Box
The silence that descended upon the study was not of this world.
It was the silence of a crypt being opened after a hundred years.
Damian did not look at Nora. He did not look at the crumpled envelope bearing the name of the woman who had died in a free clinic.
Slowly, deliberately, his large, scarred hands reached for the white cardboard lid.
His fingers took hold of the edges. He lifted the top off the box.
Inside, resting on a bed of yellowed cotton batting, was not a toy. It was not a piece of costume jewelry.
It was an antique silver locket, shaped like a wild rose, suspended from a delicate, hand-hammered platinum chain.
The silver was tarnished at the hinges, darkened by time and smoke, but the craftsmanship was unmistakable. Damian had commissioned that exact locket from an artisan in Florence nineteen years ago, on the morning after his wedding, paying for the platinum with the first legitimate profits his family had ever earned.
Beside the locket, folded into a tiny, tight square no larger than a postage stamp, was a piece of parchment.
Damian reached into the box.
His thumb brushed the cold silver of the rose. A physical shock traveled up his forearm, through his shoulder, and struck his heart with the force of an anvil falling from the sky.
He lifted the tiny folded parchment.
With agonizing care, terrified that the brittle paper would turn to dust beneath his calloused fingers, Damian unfolded the square.
The handwriting was faint, written in faded blue fountain-pen ink, the strokes elegant and hurried, bearing the unmistakable, sloping cursive of Teresa Marchetti:
My Damian,
If you are reading this, the shadows have finally reached our gate. Do not let them turn you into the stone they want you to be. You were a protector before you were a king. Look inside the locket. Remember what we planted.
— T.
Damian’s jaw began to tremble.
He lowered the paper. His left thumb pressed against the microscopic spring catch on the side of the silver rose.
Click.
The locket sprang open.
Inside, beneath a scratched oval of watchmakers’ glass, was a photograph.
It was not a portrait of Teresa.
It was an ultrasound image, dated October twelfth, eight years ago. Beneath the grainy black-and-white curve of new life, written in Teresa’s hand with microscopic precision, was a single date:
Due: May 4th.
And beneath the ultrasound, curled into a tiny hollow carved into the silver casing, was a lock of fine, light brown hair tied with a strand of red embroidery silk.
Damian’s vision blurred.
A hot, scalding tear broke from his left eye—the first tear to touch Damian Marchetti’s skin in nearly three thousand days. It tracked clean through the dark stubble on his cheek, falling onto the black oak desk with a soft, final pat.
Teresa had been pregnant.
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She had known for three weeks before the fire. She had hidden the news, waiting for Christmas morning to give him the locket, waiting for the one day of the year when his guards were dismissed and his guns were locked away.
And when the fire came, she had handed the secret to Elena Hayes, trusting that a loyal nurse would carry the memory of her child out of the flames.
