Chapter 1 - The Sound of Footsteps
Rachel Vance did not look back to see why Dario had stopped on the stairs. In her line of work—or rather, the life she had buried beneath bleached cotton aprons and false references—turning around when someone watched was an amateur’s mistake. You never acknowledged an audience until you were ready to strike or disappear.
Instead, she remained seated on the polished parquet floor beside Sophia. The girl’s hand trembled where it gripped the plush fabric of her one-eared bear, but she did not pull away. For three years, Sophia had been treated like a porcelain figurine waiting to shatter. Kalin Caruso had ordered everyone to step softly, speak in hushed whispers, and handle his daughter with velvet gloves.
He didn't realize that treating a child like glass only taught her that the world was waiting to break her.
“Close your eyes,” Rachel murmured, keeping her voice low and even, pitched beneath the hum of the estate’s heavy industrial air handlers. “I mean, really close them. Focus on what’s under your feet.”
Sophia swallowed. Her voice came out thin, rusty from disuse. “It’s just... floor.”
“No,” Rachel said softly. “It’s oak planks laid over steel framing. Every person in this house moves that wood differently. Your father walks with his weight on his heels—heavy, steady, a man who expects the ground to yield to him. Giovanni steps flat-footed, slow, dragging his left toe by half an inch because of an old knee injury.”
Sophia tilted her head upward beneath the silk ribbon covering her eyes. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “What about Dario?”
“Dario walks on the outside edges of his boots,” Rachel answered without hesitation. “He moves fast when he thinks no one is looking, but he drags his heels when he wants to intimidate someone. Listen right now. Where is he?”
Sophia went rigid. Her chin lifted toward the gallery above the entryway. Two floors down, beneath the muffled ticking of a grandfather clock and the distant drone of a vacuum cleaner, a dull, rhythmic squeak of rubber against stone echoed faintly through the ventilation grate.
“He’s at the bottom of the grand stairs,” Sophia whispered. Her breath hitched, not in fear this time, but in sudden, electric discovery. “He stopped by the armory door.”
“Exactly,” Rachel said, a faint smile touching her lips. “He thinks because your eyes don’t work, you’re trapped in the dark. But sound travels faster through solid stone than light does through a dark corridor. If you can hear them coming, they can never corner you.”
Sophia’s fingers loosened from the stuffed animal. Slowly, timidly, she reached out and touched Rachel’s forearm. She felt the coarse fabric of the maid’s gray sweater, but beneath it, the girl’s small fingers recognized something solid: muscle corded like steel cables, resting motionless beneath an unthreatening disguise.
“Can you teach me how to stand up?” Sophia asked. “Every time I stumble, the nurses pick me up by my underarms like a doll. I hate it.”
“Then we start with balance,” Rachel said. She stood up smoothly, without making a single rustle of fabric. “Stand up on your own two feet, Miss Caruso. Put your feet shoulder-width apart. Sink your center of gravity down. Don't balance on your toes like you’re waiting to be pushed. Dig into the floor. You aren't glass. You’re stone.”
Sophia pushed herself up from the floor. Her knees wobbled, conditioned by months of being hovered over by panic-stricken attendants. But she planted her small leather shoes firmly against the oak. She widened her stance. When Rachel gently tapped her right shoulder with two fingers, Sophia swayed, but she did not fall.
A faint breath of laughter escaped the young girl’s lips—the first sound of genuine joy to echo through the Caruso mansion since the car bomb had taken her mother three years prior.
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Upstairs, behind the tinted glass of an unmonitored security alcove, Dario stood frowning at a small digital receiver. He hadn't heard the words, but he had seen the posture through the gap in the banister.
“The new girl is getting too close to the kid,” Dario muttered into his encrypted radio, speaking to a contact outside the estate’s perimeter. “Keep your eyes open. If she gets in the way of the schedule, I’ll take care of her myself.”
