Chapter 3 - The Girl at the Piano
The next morning, Sophia found her way to the music room.
Rachel followed at a distance, answering only when asked.
“Doorframe.”
“Thank you.”
“Nothing ahead for six steps.”
“I remember.”
Rachel smiled.
“Then I’ll stop reminding you.”
Sophia reached the piano and placed one hand on its polished edge.
“My mother played this.”
“Would you like to sit?”
“Yes.”
She found the bench, checked its position, and lowered herself carefully.
For a while, she touched the keys without pressing them.
Then she struck three notes.
They sounded uncertain and bright.
From the hallway, Caelan stopped walking.
Bella had played that piano on Sunday mornings, always too loudly, always insisting the house needed noise.
After her death, he had closed the music-room doors.
He had called it respect.
Now he wondered how many forms of disappearance he had mistaken for love.
Sophia pressed another key.
“I don’t remember all of her voice anymore.”
Caelan stepped into the room.
“I have recordings.”
His daughter turned toward him.
“You do?”
“Videos. Birthday parties. Your school concert. She argued with the camera every time I pointed it at her.”
Sophia smiled.
“Can we listen?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
He looked at the phone in his hand.
Three missed calls.
A meeting.
A life arranged around postponing the people who mattered.
“Now,” he said.
They sat together on the bench while Bella’s voice filled the room.
Stop recording the cake, Caelan. Your daughter’s wearing it.
Sophia laughed.
The sound hit him with such force he had to lower his head.
Rachel moved toward the door.
Sophia called after her.
“You can stay.”
So she did.
For twenty minutes, they belonged to an ordinary family’s memory.
Then Giovanni appeared.
Caelan saw his expression and stood.
In the hall, his adviser spoke quietly.
“Marcus has agreed to talk.”
“Why?”
“Because the people paying him stopped answering.”
Marcus sat in a secure office on the grounds, watched by two employees and an attorney Caelan had finally summoned after Rachel insisted that threatening a witness would only poison whatever came next.
He admitted accepting money to provide access information.
He claimed Dario had arranged everything.
He did not know Rachel’s background.
He knew her only as a photograph and a name.
When asked about Sophia, he stared at the floor.
“They said nobody would hurt her.”
Caelan took one step forward.
Rachel touched the doorframe.
Not him.
Just the wood.
The small sound stopped him.
He looked at Marcus and saw a man already rehearsing the excuse he would tell himself forever.
“Who said it?”
“A broker. Adrian Vale.”
Rachel’s face changed.
Giovanni noticed.
“You know him.”
“He ran the contractor I worked for.”
The room seemed to contract.
Caelan looked between them.
“Why would he involve the Vesparis?”
“Because he sells services,” Rachel said. “Surveillance. Access. People. If someone wants your routes or your daughter, he makes arrangements and keeps his own hands clean.”
Marcus swallowed.
“There was another name.”
Nobody moved.
“Dr. Hart.”
Caelan frowned.
Sophia’s rehabilitation coordinator.
A polished man who had visited monthly, recommended restricted activities, and assured Caelan that familiar surroundings and limited stress were best.
Rachel remembered his questions.
How often did Sophia leave her rooms?
Which staff members had gained her trust?
Did the new maid have a surname?
She felt suddenly cold.
“When is he due?” she asked.
Giovanni checked his tablet.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
Caelan’s expression hardened.
“Cancel.”
Rachel shook her head.
“First, verify who he is through the clinic. Use a number you find independently.”
Giovanni made the call.
The real clinic had not employed Dr. Stephen Hart for nearly two years.
His license remained active.
His contract did not.
Caelan sat down slowly.
He remembered signing forms without reading them because the man spoke gently about trauma.
He remembered accepting isolation as treatment because it resembled the protection he already wanted.
From the music room, three piano notes sounded again.
Sophia practicing.
Rachel looked toward the hallway.
“We need an actual care team,” she said. “People with credentials you verify. And a safe place he doesn’t know.”
For once, Caelan did not argue.
He picked up his phone and canceled everything on his calendar.
May you like
Then he asked the question nobody in his household had ever heard him ask.
“Who outside this house can we trust?”
