Chapter 2: Scent of Bergamot & The Hidden Gallery

The scent of bergamot and roasted garlic wafts through the usually sterile corridors of Blackwood Manor. It’s an intrusion, an ambush on the senses I have carefully insulated for six years. I stand in the shadows of the grand dining room, watching Sophia Ricci move around the kitchen like a general commanding a campaign of warmth.

She hums. Actually hums. And her daughter, Emma, is sitting on the counter, swinging her legs and babbling to the stoic, armed guards stationed at the perimeter. The men look terrified—not of an impending attack, but of a three-year-old demanding they admire her crayon drawings.

I step into the light. “Mrs. Ricci.”

Sophia doesn’t jump. She merely wipes her hands on an apron that is absurdly cheerful for this house. “Mr. Thorne. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. I made enough for you, if you intend to eat anywhere other than that cave of yours.”

I stiffen. “My arrangements are my own. You are crossing boundaries.”

She steps out from behind the island, standing toe-to-toe with me. She is a full head shorter, but the fire in her eyes makes up for the height. “You hired me to help your son. You watch him through glass, Mr. Thorne. You treat him like a suspect under surveillance, not a child. If you want him to heal, you have to step out of that bunker and act like a real father.”

The raw audacity of her words hits me like a physical blow. The rage that usually rises to my defense is strangely absent, replaced by a deep, aching hollow. She is right, and the truth of it tastes like ash.

Before I can formulate a response that isn’t a confession of my own failures, Emma’s voice pipes up from the hallway. “Look, Mommy! Monster pictures!”

My blood runs cold. I push past Sophia, striding down the corridor toward the east wing. Emma is kneeling outside Noah’s room. She has managed to pry up a loose section of the antique floorboards—a hollow space I didn’t even know existed.

Spread across the Persian runner are dozens of rough, dark charcoal sketches.

Sophia gasps behind me.

I drop to one knee, my hands trembling as I sift through the papers. They aren’t just scribbles. They are meticulously detailed, frantic depictions of trauma. The eyes are hollow, the shadows elongated. But one sketch stops the breath in my throat.

It’s the grand marble staircase. The same one I scrubbed my wife’s blood from six years ago.

At the bottom of the stairs, a woman is falling, her face contorted in a silent scream. But it’s the top of the stairs that paralyzes me. A figure stands there, shrouded in dark, violent strokes. The face is a blur, but the hand resting on the banister is perfectly rendered.

On the index finger is a massive, distinctive eagle-head signet ring.

“My god,” Sophia whispers. “What is that?”

I close my eyes, the smell of peppermint fading, replaced by the memory of a scent I have trusted my entire life. Imported bergamot pipe tobacco.

The ring. The tobacco. It isn’t a Moretti emblem. It is a Thorne heirloom. The very ring I kissed when I pledged loyalty to the family. The ring belonging to the man who raised me after my father died.

Uncle Vincent.

I crush the drawing in my fist, a lethal, icy clarity washing over me. The war I’ve been fighting against the Morettis… the evidence Vincent provided… it was all a lie.

“Take Emma to your room,” I tell Sophia, my voice dropping to a gravelly, dangerous octave. “Lock the door. Do not let anyone in unless it is me.”

Sophia’s eyes widen, sensing the shift in the air. The beast I have kept caged in the bunker is finally stepping out.

I turn back to the drawing, staring at the eagle-head ring. The true monster isn’t waiting outside the gates—he has a key to the front door…