Chapter 2 - The Sound of the Lost
Down in his ground-floor study, Adrien Valente was staring at an unlit fireplace, a half-empty glass of untouched bourbon resting on the side table.
When the single piano note reverberated through the floorboards, he froze.
His hand tightened around the heavy glass until his knuckles turned pure white. His heart, an organ he believed had died and calcified three years ago in a Boston hospital room, gave a violent, painful thud against his ribs.
No one had touched that piano since Elena died.
Elena, his wife—a brilliant concert pianist whose soft laughter and gentle melodies used to fill these gloomy stone halls with warmth, light, and life. After her sudden, agonizing passing from an aggressive illness, Adrien had sealed the east wing, locked the music room, and buried his heart under a mountain of violent city shipping contracts and ruthless corporate takeovers. He had made it clear to every soul in Chicago: touching her memory meant total destruction.
A dark, terrifying rage surged through his veins. Someone had disobeyed him. Someone had dared to step foot into his sanctuary.
Adrien stood up so fast his heavy leather armchair crashed backward onto the rug. He didn't grab his coat or his silver pocket watch. He moved up the grand staircase like a phantom, his polished black shoes striking the marble with lethal precision. His jaw was set, his dark eyes burning with a cold, terrifying fury that had made hardened mob lieutenants weep for mercy.
He rounded the corner of the second floor, stepping into the dark hallway of the east wing.
The door to the music room was wide open. Golden light from a lone candle on the mantelpiece flickered across the threshold.
Adrien stepped into the room, his voice a low, terrifying rasp that could freeze blood. "Whoever you are, you have five seconds to step away from—"
The words died in his throat.
Sitting on the high velvet bench of his late wife’s priceless Steinway was not a thief, nor a careless maid, nor an intruding rival.
It was a tiny girl in a faded white nightgown. Her small bare feet dangled several inches above the floorboards. She was staring at the piano keys with wide, innocent hazel eyes, her little index finger hovering above a treble key.
Standing near the open doorway, her face pale as a bedsheet, her body shaking so violently she could barely breathe, was Maya. She had just reached the room a second before Adrien, her hands pressed over her mouth in sheer, suffocating terror.
"Ellie..." Maya choked out, her voice barely a whisper. She dropped to her knees on the hard floor, bowing her head toward Adrien. "Please... please, sir! She’s only three! She didn't know! She lost her toy and got confused in the dark! I'll take her and leave tonight! Please don't hurt her!"
Adrien didn't look at Maya. He couldn't. His eyes were locked onto the tiny child sitting on the piano bench.
Ellie didn't run. She didn't cry. She didn't scream at the sight of the towering, imposing man dressed in black, whose very name made shipping magnates tremble across the Great Lakes.
Instead, Ellie looked at him, tilted her small head, and pressed down on three keys simultaneously.
A soft, clumsy chord echoed through the moonlit room—a simple, melancholic chord that Elena used to play whenever she began practicing her favorite Chopin nocturne.
Adrien felt the air leave his lungs as if he had been struck in the chest with a sledgehammer. The absolute silence he had cultivated for three years, the cold stone fortress he had built around his shattered soul, cracked completely open.
"Sir..." Mrs. Rose’s panicked voice echoed from the hallway as she hurried into the room, clutching her bathrobe around her shoulders. "Sir, please! Maya is a good girl! It was an accident!"
Adrien raised one large, gloved hand. The room fell instantly silent. Mrs. Rose stopped in her tracks, her mouth closing.
Adrien took a slow, heavy step forward. His long black overcoat brushed against the edge of the rosewood platform. He stopped right beside the piano bench, looking down at the little girl.
"What is your name?" Adrien asked. His voice was lower than usual, devoid of its usual lethal sharpness, carrying a strange, gravelly strain.
The little girl looked up into his dark, stern eyes. "Ellie," she said softly.
"Do you know whose piano this is, Ellie?"
"The pretty lady in the picture," Ellie replied innocently, pointing a small finger toward a large, gold-framed portrait hanging on the wall beside the bay window—a portrait of Elena smiling, her hands resting on the very same piano.
Adrien looked at the portrait, then back down at Ellie.
"Can you play it?" he asked softly.
Maya gasped from the floor, expecting the outburst that usually followed any mention of his late wife. But Adrien didn't shout. He didn't move.
Ellie looked back down at the ivory keys. "My daddy used to sing a song. Before he went to the clouds."
May you like
She pressed three more keys. It wasn't music—it was just the clumsy, innocent tapping of a toddler—but in that vast, empty room, under the cold silver moonlight, it was the first human sound that had resonated through the east wing in three endless years.
Adrien stood frozen for a long moment. Then, slowly, astonishingly, the terrifying boss of the Valente family lowered himself onto one knee beside the small velvet bench, his large, scarred hand resting gently beside her tiny fingers on the keys.
