Chapter 3 - The Secret Under the Floorboards
The lock on the third-floor bedroom door clicked softly as Dante turned the key.
He pushed the door open. The room was dark, filled with the faint scent of lavender and baby powder. On the small canopy bed in the corner, a tiny form lay curled under a heavy pink duvet, shivering slightly despite the summer warmth.
Dante stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.
"Isabella," he whispered.
The tiny form flinched. The duvet pulled up higher, covering her head.
Dante felt a sharp, agonizing stab in his chest—a pain far worse than any bullet he had ever taken. His daughter was terrified of him. For six months, he had doubted her, scolded her, and locked her away because he had chosen to believe the polished, beautiful lies of a snake sleeping in his bed.
Dante walked slowly over to the bed and sat on the edge. He didn't touch her. He just sat there, his shoulders bowed under the crushing weight of his shame.
"I'm sorry, little bird," Dante murmured into the dark room, using the nickname her biological mother had given her. "Daddy was blind. Daddy was so, so blind."
The duvet slowly slid down.
Two wide, tear-stained dark eyes looked up at him in the moonlight. Isabella’s tiny hands clutched the edge of the blanket tightly against her chin.
"Are you going to send me away?" she whispered, her voice cracking with a terror that no seven-year-old should ever know. "Mommy said... Mommy said if I talked at the dinner tonight, you would lock me in a dark box in Switzerland."
Dante’s jaw tightened until his back teeth felt ready to shatter.
"No one is sending you away, Isabella," Dante said, his voice raw with emotion as he reached down and gently pulled her into his arms. He held her tiny frame against his chest, burying his face in her soft hair, feeling her small arms slowly reach around his neck, sobbing softly into his shoulder. "No one will ever hurt you again. I swear it on your mother’s soul."
They sat like that for long minutes in the quiet dark.
When Isabella’s sobs finally slowed, she pulled back slightly, looking into her father’s eyes with a solemn, ancient gravity.
"Daddy," she whispered. "I wasn't lying about the glass."
"I know, little bird," Dante said softly. "I know."
"It wasn't in the wine," Isabella revealed, her small fingers clutching Dante’s lapel. "She didn't put it in the wine."
Dante frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I watched her from behind the curtains before the dinner started," Isabella said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. "She didn't drop anything into the glass. She rubbed the rim of your glass with a small wet cloth she kept in her pocket. She put it where your lips touch."
Dante froze.
The rim of the glass.
The house doctor had dipped the reagent test strips into the liquid inside the flutes. He hadn't tested the outer crystal rim. A contact nerve agent or a tasteless paralytic compound applied to the glass rim would be ingested the moment he took a sip, leaving the wine itself completely clean.
If Dante had drunk from that glass during the toast, he would have collapsed within an hour from an apparent cardiac arrest, while Camila—who drank the liquid from the swapped glass—would remain totally unaffected because the rim of her glass was clean.
It was brilliant. It was fatal. And it had almost worked.
"And the book?" Dante asked gently. "The encyclopedia of toxins in your dollhouse?"
"She put it there three days ago," Isabella said quietly. "I saw her hide it under my doll's bed when she thought I was sleeping. She wanted you to find it so you would think I was crazy."
Dante closed his eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath to control the murderous rage threatening to break through his composure.
"Isabella," Dante said softly, looking at her. "There's something else you need to tell me. Why did you say she was meeting a dead woman?"
Isabella’s eyes widened slightly in the dark. She leaned closer to her father's ear.
"Because three weeks ago, when she thought I was asleep in the garden house," Isabella whispered, "I heard her talking on her secret phone. She called the person on the phone 'Elena'."
Dante’s heart stopped beating.
The air left his lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.
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"What did you say?" Dante rasped, grabbing his daughter’s shoulders a little too tightly before quickly loosening his grip. "What name did she say?"
"Elena," Isabella repeated clearly. "She said, 'Don't worry, Elena. The estate will be ours soon. Dante doesn't suspect a thing.'"
