Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE WITH NO LOCKED ROOMS
Samantha called me on a Sunday morning while I was standing in a bookstore, holding a children's atlas I had no right to buy without asking.
She sounded tired. “Connor wants to meet you again.”
I set the book down.
“What did you tell him?”
“That we used to be family and that you're someone important from my past. He asked if you liked drawing. I told him you used to draw terribly ambitious castles.”
“I did.”
“He wants to show you how to make a bridge from paper.”
My throat closed.
“Is that something you're comfortable with?” I asked.
“Not entirely. But we're doing this with a family counselor, and we'll start small. He needs to know you as a person before we explain everything else.”
“I'll be there.”
“The visit is at the children's center, not your house. One hour. If he wants to stop, we stop.”
“Understood.”
“And Nicholas, please don't arrive with a room full of presents.”
I looked at the atlas on the shelf. “I've been warned.”
“Good.”
Her small laugh was over almost before it began. It stayed with me all day.
The meeting happened on Tuesday in a bright playroom with a mural of trees. Dr. Miriam Cole, the child therapist, explained that no one would make declarations or promises about the future. Connor could call me Nicholas. Samantha would remain present. I wasn't there to earn affection; I was there to demonstrate that I could be safe, predictable, and kind.
Connor arrived carrying a yellow folder as large as his chest.
“Hi, Nick,” he said.
Samantha looked at me, checking whether I would correct him.
“Hi, Connor.”
“I know how to make a bridge that stands up by itself.”
“That's impressive.”
“It only falls if you push it.”
I almost said something about how most things did. Dr. Cole gave me a look that reminded me to let children be children.
Connor spread folded paper strips across the table. He showed me how he made triangles to support a flat span. I followed his instructions so carefully that he laughed.
“You're doing it like it's a test.”
“It feels important.”
“It's just paper.”
He handed me a piece of tape. “Here. You can make mistakes.”
Samantha turned toward the window, but not before I saw the tears in her eyes.
For fifty minutes we built bridges. Connor asked about my favorite color, whether I had ever ridden a horse, and whether my father had liked boats. I answered simply. At the end he gave me the smallest bridge to take home.
“You can put it somewhere high,” he said. “So nobody steps on it.”
“I will.”
“Are you going to come back?”
I looked toward Samantha and Dr. Cole. The therapist nodded slightly.
“If you and your mom want me to,” I said.
Connor appeared satisfied. “Okay. You can come on another Tuesday.”
When he went to wash his hands, Samantha stood beside me with her arms folded.
“He likes you,” she said.
“That's a privilege.”
“Please remember that when things get difficult.”
“I will.”
She studied my face. “You've been sleeping badly.”
“I listened to a recording from my father.”
“I heard.”
“There's a security order with my signature. I approved a change that left him exposed.”
Her expression tightened, but she didn't step away.
“Did you know what you were signing?”
“No. I should have.”
“That's the part you have to sit with, Nick. Not just the people who fooled you. The fact that you gave them the authority to fool you.”
I nodded. “I am.”
She looked toward the bathroom door. “Good. Because Connor will grow up making mistakes. He needs adults who know how to own theirs.”
Two days later, the publicity around Connor worsened. Reporters learned Samantha's employer had once received grants from a Pellegrini foundation. A radio host suggested she'd concealed Connor to get a better financial settlement. The claim was false, but the accusation traveled faster than any correction.
Samantha's workplace posted a statement supporting her. Still, someone left an envelope on her windshield containing a photocopy of an old family photograph with the face of my father circled in red.
Samantha took the envelope to Ortiz. She then made a decision I'd been expecting and dreading.
“We're leaving the city for a while,” she told me through Maya.
“Where?” I asked.
“That isn't something you're entitled to know.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes. I'm arranging it myself. The investigator knows the address, and so does my attorney.”
I wanted to insist that my team could protect her better than anyone else. I knew the sentence would sound exactly like Dominic's promises years earlier.
“Please let me know when you arrive,” I said instead. “Only if you feel comfortable.”
“I'll ask Maya to confirm it.”
The house she chose belonged to Mrs. Alvarez's sister in a small Hudson Valley town. It had mismatched furniture, creaky stairs, and a kitchen table with scratches from generations of homework. No security cameras watched the hallways. No staff entered bedrooms without knocking. Samantha later told me the greatest luxury was the absence of locked interior doors.
Connor called it the apple house because a tree in the backyard was shedding red fruit onto the grass.
On his first night there he asked whether Nicholas could see the tree.
“Maybe on a video call,” Samantha said.
“Can we show him the crooked apple?”
“We'll ask.”
The call came on Sunday. I answered from my kitchen, where the little paper bridge stood safely on top of the refrigerator.
“Nick!” Connor shouted. “This apple is shaped like a potato!”
He held a red object so close to the camera that I could barely see anything else.
“It certainly seems confused,” I said.
He laughed. Samantha sat behind him, smiling despite herself. We talked for ten minutes about apples and clouds. Not once did I ask where the house was.
After the call, Valentina came over carrying a sheaf of documents from our father's archive. Her face was pale.
“Evelyn found a second set of transfers,” she said. “The money didn't just pay the investigators who followed Samantha. It paid a private storage company in New Jersey. A unit has been rented under a false business name since the year Dad died.”
“What's inside?”
“We don't know. Ortiz is working on the warrants.”
Valentina set down a copy of the last invoice. The storage unit's billing contact was Vincent Rinaldi, but the emergency authorization carried a typed name that made my stomach twist.
Samantha Pellegrini.
“They kept using her identity after the divorce,” I said.
“Yes. If the company is searched, they might try to say she owns whatever they find.”
I picked up the paper. “Tell Ortiz immediately.”
“I have. But there's something else.”
She showed me an old family photograph. Dominic stood beside my father at a dock opening. Behind them was a woman in a blue raincoat, face turned away from the camera.
“That's Mabel Hurst,” Valentina said. “Dad's former private nurse. She was supposed to testify in an unrelated labor investigation four years ago. She disappeared before her deposition.”
“Do you think she's dead?”
“I don't know. Evelyn thinks she may have kept records about the night Dad died.”
“Can Ortiz find her?”
“She's trying.”
My sister seemed distracted. She kept checking her phone, then turning it facedown. When I asked why, she hesitated.
“Dominic called me yesterday. He asked whether Connor had your birthmark.”
A chill moved through me. The small crease above my eyebrow wasn't a birthmark, but my family had always jokingly called it one.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Then he said fatherhood could be dangerous when enemies knew where to look.”
“Have you told Ortiz?”
“Yes.”
I urged her to stay at my apartment until the investigation progressed. She refused.
“Don't start treating me like a parcel you can ship into storage,” she said. “I'm helping expose Dominic because he's been controlling this family long enough.”
She kissed my cheek and left before midnight.
At 2:16 a.m. my phone rang. Sofia spoke before I could ask what happened.
“Valentina's car was found near the old freight station. Empty.”
“Where is she?”
“We don't know. Her phone is off.”
Then a message arrived from my sister's number.
It contained only four words.
DON'T TRUST VINCENT. EVER.
For the first time since discovering Connor, I felt the familiar temptation to solve everything through fear.
And for the first time in my life, that temptation frightened me more than the threat itself.
I called Detective Ortiz instead of summoning the men who used to solve my problems with unmarked cars. She asked me when I had last seen Valentina, whether my sister had seemed frightened, and if I'd received any message besides the warning. I answered every question. My hand shook so badly that I had to set the phone on speaker.
“Don't make any private approach to Dominic or Vincent,” Ortiz said. “You'll complicate the search and may put your sister at risk.”
“She's all the family I have left.”
“You have other family, Mr. Pellegrini. You just met him. Think about what your son will remember if this ends with you in a prison cell.”
May you like
When we hung up, I moved Connor's paper bridge from the refrigerator to the center of my kitchen table. The little structure stood on folded triangles, held together by pieces of cheap tape. I had built it by following a child's instructions.
I wanted to believe it could hold.
