Chapter 3 - THE WITNESS WITH A GREEN WATCH
The last time Emma had seen Aaron Bell, he had been kneeling beside the kitchen radiator with a screwdriver and a roll of yellow tape. She remembered the green watch because it was the same shade as the toy dinosaur Luca carried everywhere. Aaron had told her the radiator was safe to use and asked if she always worked late. She had answered without thinking. Almost always. Mrs. Moretti preferred her away from the guest rooms during the day.
Now Emma sat opposite Detective Singh and wondered how many of her ordinary answers had become information someone could use against a child.
"You didn't cause this," Singh said, reading her expression. "The person who collected and exploited those details made a choice."
Emma nodded, though certainty was harder to feel than to hear. She described Aaron's questions, the repair ticket, the day the radiator had been supposedly serviced. Her notes gave the date: November 19. On that day Victoria had ordered the staff to leave Luca's wing empty while a technician tested the cameras.
"Why did you write it down?" Singh asked.
"Because he came into the pantry later and the camera light was still blinking. Mrs. Gable said nothing was wrong. I wanted to remember in case somebody blamed me for it."
Singh photographed the notebook and arranged to preserve it. The entries weren't proof of every motive Emma feared, but they placed workers and equipment in rooms at specific times. They could be checked against contracts, logbooks, and third-party records.
Meanwhile, Dante visited the small chapel on the estate's edge, a place he had built after Sofia died and rarely entered. There was no priest and no ceremony, only a wooden bench and a window facing the old orchard. He sat there with the emergency guardianship trust on his lap and tried to remember the man he had been seven years earlier.
Sofia had died from complications after Luca's birth. In the months that followed, Dante had operated as though relentless work could protect him from grief. He hired people to handle the home. He accepted Victoria's attention because she promised to make everything easier. He convinced himself that the boy would not notice the difference between a father who loved him and a father who arrived in time for photographs.
The forged papers would be easy to condemn. The real trust bearing his signature was harder. It revealed a door he had left open because paperwork seemed less urgent than running his empire.
Marco entered quietly. "The police located Aaron's car at a parking facility near the airport. He didn't board a flight under his own name."
"Any sign of Victoria?"
"A withdrawal from her personal account in Connecticut. She used a teller window, not an ATM."
"Was anyone with her?"
"The bank has footage. Police are requesting it."
Dante looked up. "Good. Let them do their job. Our people watch the estate and Luca. Nobody chases."
It felt strange to give an order that narrowed his own power. Marco's expression suggested he felt it too.
At noon, Emma's mother called. Diane Collins had heard rumors from a neighbor who followed gossip accounts online. Emma had attempted to keep the assault private until she could speak to her in person, but a photograph of the ruined cake had appeared on a social media page with a sensational caption.
"Are you hurt?" Diane asked immediately.
"I am. I'm being treated. I'm safe in a different place."
"Did that woman strike you?"
"Yes. I reported it."
Her mother's breathing grew uneven. Emma described the injuries without minimizing them and explained that an advocate was helping her. Diane wanted to travel to New York at once, but her arthritis made a winter trip difficult. They agreed on a video call and a visit when Emma's doctor cleared her to travel. For once, Emma did not reassure her mother by pretending everything was fine.
That afternoon, the hotel footage from the Connecticut bank showed Victoria taking cash from her account with a man standing several feet behind her. He wore a cap and kept his face turned away from the ceiling camera. He left first. When he passed a mirrored pillar, a green watch flashed beneath his cuff.
Singh did not announce that she had found Aaron. She marked it as a possible identification and requested sharper footage from a neighboring business. The world was full of green watches. Evidence became useful when separate details aligned.
Another lead arrived from the school listed on the false boarding papers. Its director, Dr. Claire Wexler, told investigators she had never offered Luca a place. She remembered someone using the Romano foundation's name to request a sample admission packet. The caller's voice had been female. She supplied an email showing the request came from a domain that differed from the real foundation's by one letter.
The deception had layers: a real school as a visible explanation, a false address as the destination, and a signed guardianship plan as supposed authority. Whoever designed it expected employees to glance at the title and stop reading.
Emma read the director's statement with permission through her attorney. "Luca wouldn't have known the difference," she whispered.
"Most adults wouldn't," her attorney, Lena Walsh, replied. "That is why authentication matters."
Lena was thirty-eight, plainly dressed, and uninterested in Dante's reputation. She explained Emma's legal options in precise terms. She could cooperate with investigators, pursue a civil claim for workplace assault and negligent supervision, request documentation about her employment, and decline informal interviews with the Moretti organization. None required a personal relationship with Dante.
Emma asked whether giving testimony would mean standing near Victoria again. Lena said there were procedures to reduce unnecessary contact, but she would not promise a process without discomfort. Emma appreciated the honesty.
She also asked for a copy of the employment handbook. The page on employee safety contained a number for an anonymous reporting hotline. Emma had called it once after Victoria locked Luca in a study as punishment. The person who answered had said the matter was domestic, not employment-related, and told Emma to speak to the housekeeper.
"Do you remember the time?" Lena asked.
Emma opened her notebook. "October 28. Four thirty-six in the afternoon."
The lawyer's gaze sharpened. "Then we can request the hotline records."
At the mansion, Dante asked the household employees to attend separate voluntary interviews conducted by an outside investigator. He told them they could bring representatives, decline questions, and speak to police instead. Mrs. Gable stood at the end of the corridor looking pale. She had been head housekeeper for nearly a decade and had enforced Victoria's prohibitions with the certainty of someone afraid to lose a well-paid job.
"I knew she disliked the boy," Mrs. Gable said when the investigator asked what she had seen. "I thought it was not my place to question a marriage."
"Was it your place to lock a seven-year-old in his room?" the investigator asked.
Mrs. Gable covered her mouth. She had never put the events into words that clearly. She admitted that she had blocked Emma's access to Luca after Victoria complained of overfamiliarity. She also acknowledged receiving multiple written instructions on household stationery, some carrying Dante's stamped signature.
When shown one, Dante insisted he had never issued it. An examiner would determine whether the stamp was legitimate. Even if forged, however, the staff's willingness to obey a dangerous order reflected a house where nobody believed they could say no.
That night, Luca asked why so many new people were talking to the grown-ups. Dante said they were trying to understand mistakes and prevent them from happening again. Luca wanted to know whether Emma would be punished for making the cake.
"No," Dante said. "She won't."
"Will she still like me if she doesn't work here?"
Dante felt the answer catch in his throat. "I think she cares about you very much. But she gets to decide where she works. Caring about someone isn't a job she has to keep."
Luca considered this. "Then I can send her a card that doesn't ask her to come back."
"I think she'd like that."
Late that evening, Detective Singh received a call from a telecommunications analyst. One outgoing call had been placed from the mansion's employee hotline on October 28, shortly after Emma reported Luca's confinement. It had not gone to a safeguarding officer. It had been routed to a number associated with Bellwether Systems.
The hotline meant to receive frightened workers' reports had been connected to the same vendor that held the nursery's digital keys.
Singh read the record twice. It was the first sign that the infiltration had not begun with Victoria's forged papers. Somebody had constructed a system designed to hear warnings before they reached anyone willing to act.
She called Dante's attorney, not Dante himself, and requested preservation of the entire hotline contract. By morning, she intended to ask a judge for warrants covering the vendor's servers and correspondence.
May you like
Across the city, Aaron Bell sat in a motel room watching a muted television. He had removed the green watch and placed it beside a plastic keycard. His phone lit up with a message from an unknown sender: THE BOY STAYS ON SCHEDULE.
Aaron read it without responding. On the other bed lay an old newspaper photograph of a burned warehouse and a family gathered behind a police barrier. He turned the paper face down, as if that could erase the reason he had come to the Moretti house in the first place.
