Chapter 2 - MONITOR FOUR AND THE INTERCOM BUTTON
Through the high-gain directional microphones embedded in the ceiling moldings of the nursery, every breath, every rustle of fabric, and every squeak of rubber against wood carried into Vincent’s underground office with pristine, terrifying clarity.
On Monitor Four, Clara reached forward. Her movements were neither rushed nor hesitant. She placed her right palm flat beneath the hollow of Matteo’s right knee, her left hand gently cupping the heel of his white sneaker.
"Deep breath in through your nose, Matteo," Clara whispered through the speakers. "Let the air fill your stomach. When you breathe out, we bend."
Matteo did not close his eyes. He stared straight ahead at the rain cascading down the glass, his jaw setting into a tight, pale line. As Clara began to slowly elevate the lower leg, bending the knee to a thirty-degree angle to stretch the shortened hamstring tendons, a sudden, sharp tremor rippled through the boy's small frame.
His face contorted.
A sharp, involuntary wince pulled at the corners of his lips. His small, pale fingers shot outward, clutching frantically at the crisp white cotton sheets draped over the adjacent mattress, bunching the fabric into white-knuckled knots. His chest hitched in a silent, suffocating spasm of pain, and a single, heavy tear broke over his lower eyelid, tracking a hot, clean path down his cheek.
In the security bunker, Vincent Rossi leaned violently forward in his leather executive chair.
The broad muscles across his shoulders pulled the fabric of his black suit jacket taut. His dark pupils dilated with sudden, volcanic fury, his knuckles whitening as his hand slammed down onto the polished console.
He’s hurting him.
The thought hammered inside Vincent’s skull like an iron rivet. For fourteen months, Vincent had lived with the agonizing, unbearable guilt that he had failed to shield his family from the bomb meant for him. He had built this fortress, hired the finest private security details in the country, and surrounded his broken son with an impenetrable perimeter of cameras, armed guards, and clinical isolation. Every grimace, every tear on Matteo’s face was an indictment of his own failure as a father. He had dismissed the last physical therapist after three days because the man had insisted on using electrical stimulation pads that made Matteo flinch; he had fired a pediatric neurologist for daring to suggest that Matteo’s silence was an act of psychological defiance rather than neural trauma.
Vincent’s thumb moved across the console.
His hand hovered a fraction of an inch above the raised, crimson plastic of the master intercom switch. He was preparing to open the line—to unleash the cold, commanding roar that had made shipping magnates and corrupt port commissioners weep in his boardrooms—and order Clara Hayes off his property before the rain stopped.
"Get your hands off my son," Vincent’s voice rasped in the empty, dark office, his thumb lowering to depress the switch.
On the screen, Clara Hayes’s eyes flicked upward toward the corner of the ceiling molding—straight into the hidden lens of Camera Four.
May you like
She did not wait for the alarm to sound. She did not wait for the Don to roar.
As if sensing the invisible crosshairs locking onto the back of her neck, Clara instantly relaxed her arms, lowering Matteo’s foot back onto the adjustable black footplate of the wheelchair with exquisite, feather-light care.
