Chapter 1 - The Thing Beneath the Mattress“You think my security team is incompetent?” Matteo asked.
Liana did not flinch.
Twenty-two days ago, she might have. Before the cemetery. Before the tiny white coffin. Before grief hollowed out every soft part of her and left behind something strangely fearless.
“No,” she said quietly. “I think whoever did this knew exactly where your security team would look.”
Matteo’s stare sharpened.
Nico shifted against her chest, but he did not cry. His small fingers remained locked in the collar of her red maid uniform, clinging as though she were the only solid thing in the room.
That alone seemed to disturb Matteo more than anything she had said.
For weeks, this child had screamed himself breathless. Now he lay against the heart of a stranger, silent and exhausted, with his damp cheek pressed beneath her chin.
Matteo looked from his son to the crib.
“Explain.”
Liana moved carefully toward the carved white crib. “Security checked under the mattress, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“They lifted it?”
“Yes.”
“They looked beneath the crib?”
“Yes.”
“But did anyone take the mattress apart?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
There it was.
The smallest hesitation.
Liana had spent too many nights in hospitals, too many hours beside machines, too much time listening to nurses speak gently while hiding panic behind their eyes. She knew that people checked what they expected to find. A bottle. A wire. A needle. Something obvious.
But mothers checked seams.
Mothers checked corners.
Mothers checked anything that could scratch, choke, poison, frighten, or burn.
Liana lowered Nico into one arm and reached for the fitted sheet.
Matteo moved instantly. “Don’t put him down.”
She froze.
His command had not been loud, but it carried the authority of a man used to being obeyed. Still, beneath it, Liana heard the truth.
Not possession.
Fear.
“I won’t,” she said.
With one hand, she pulled back the pale blue sheet. The mattress beneath looked perfect. Imported. Expensive. Soft enough for a prince and clean enough to shame a hospital room.
Matteo stepped beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. He smelled of cold air, sleepless nights, and expensive soap barely masking fear.
Liana ran her fingers along the edge of the mattress.
Nothing.
She checked the corners.
Nothing.
She turned it slightly and examined the underside.
Nothing.
Matteo’s expression darkened. “There’s nothing there.”
“Wait.”
She shifted Nico higher against her shoulder. The baby sighed. A small, trusting sound that pierced straight through her ribs.
For one second, she saw another baby. Dark curls. Tiny hand. Hospital bracelet sliding down a wrist too thin to hold it.
Her son.
Her Isaac.
The memory struck so sharply that her hand trembled.
Matteo noticed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep saying that when it is clearly not nothing.”
Liana ignored him and pressed her thumb along the seam of the mattress. Near the lower left corner, the fabric gave way strangely. Not torn. Not damaged. But thicker than the rest.
Her pulse changed.
“Here.”
Matteo leaned closer.
Liana pressed again. Something small and flat shifted beneath the stitched border.
Matteo’s face went utterly still.
He reached past her and took a silver letter opener from the nursery writing desk. With careful precision, he cut one thread. Then another.
A hidden slit opened beneath the seam.
Something black slid into his palm.
It was no larger than a coin.
Thin.
Smooth.
Almost weightless.
A tiny red light blinked once.
Then died.
Nico’s body stiffened.
The baby whimpered.
Liana immediately tucked him closer and began to rock on instinct. “Shh. I have you. I have you.”
The sound that came from Nico was not a cry.
It was fear trying to become one.
Matteo stared at the black disc in his hand.
“What the hell is this?”
Liana whispered, “Something that was hurting him.”
Matteo crossed to the tablet and slammed his thumb onto a secure contact. “Dario. Nursery. Now. Bring an electronics kit. And wake Dr. Rowan.”
A voice answered through the speaker, instantly alert. “Problem?”
Matteo looked at the disc.
“Yes.”
One word.
But it made the room feel colder.
Nico’s breathing fluttered. Liana turned her face against his hair and lowered her voice. She did not mean to sing. The tune simply came out, broken and soft, because her body still remembered what her life no longer had.
“Hush now, little star…”
The effect was immediate.
Nico relaxed.
Completely.
Matteo’s eyes snapped to her.
Liana stopped singing.
The silence after was worse.
“What was that?” Matteo asked.
“A lullaby.”
“I know what a lullaby is.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because my son knew it.”
Liana’s blood slowed.
No.
That was impossible.
Matteo stepped toward her. “Sing it again.”
“No.”
“Liana.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “That song was for my son.”
The room shifted around them.
For the first time since she had entered the Varric estate, Matteo Varric did not look like a mafia boss, or a widower, or a man who owned everything beneath his feet.
He looked like a father standing at the edge of a truth he already knew would destroy him.
“You said your son is gone,” he said.
Liana’s throat tightened. “He died twenty-two days ago.”
Nico stirred in her arms.
Matteo looked at him, then at the black disc.
“And you started working here today.”
“Yes.”
“Then how does my son know your song?”
The nursery door opened.
A broad-shouldered man with silver at his temples entered first, carrying a black case. Behind him came a woman in her fifties wearing a long coat over pajamas, her gray hair twisted messily at the back of her head. She looked like someone dragged from sleep, but her eyes were sharp.
Matteo did not turn. “Dario. Check it.”
The man took the disc from him with gloved hands.
The woman looked at Nico, then Liana. “He’s calm.”
“No one asked for observations, Rowan,” Matteo said.
Dr. Rowan ignored him and stepped closer. “May I?”
Liana looked at Matteo.
He gave the smallest nod.
The doctor checked Nico without removing him from Liana’s arms. She touched his forehead, looked behind his ears, lifted one tiny hand, then paused.
“What?” Matteo asked.
Dr. Rowan’s mouth tightened.
She gently turned Nico’s head toward the light.
Behind his left ear was a faint red mark.
A pinprick.
Almost healed.
Matteo went very quiet.
“That wasn’t there before,” he said.
Dr. Rowan looked at him. “Are you sure?”
“My son has been examined by three doctors this week. I know every mark on his body.”
Liana’s hold tightened.
Nico rubbed his cheek against her uniform and sighed again.
Dario opened the device case, connected the black disc to a handheld reader, and waited as lines of code moved across the small screen.
His expression changed.
Matteo saw it. “Say it.”
Dario looked up slowly. “It’s a transmitter.”
“For what?”
“Sound.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t making sound.”
“Not for us,” Dario said. “High frequency. Intermittent pulses. Enough to disturb sleep. Enough to agitate an infant. Maybe trigger fear responses if paired with another stimulus.”
Dr. Rowan’s face hardened. “That would explain the crying.”
“No,” Liana whispered.
Everyone looked at her.
“That explains why he was crying,” she said. “Not why he stopped.”
Dario’s reader beeped.
He looked down.
Then his face went pale.
“Boss.”
Matteo turned.
Dario swallowed. “There’s stored audio on this thing.”
Matteo’s voice lowered. “Play it.”
“Matteo—”
“Play it.”
Dario pressed one button.
Static filled the nursery.
Then a woman’s voice drifted out, thin and distorted, but unmistakably gentle.
“Hush now, little star…”
Liana stopped breathing.
The room disappeared.
The chandelier. The crib. The armed men outside the door. The mafia boss standing beside her.
All of it vanished beneath the sound of her own voice.
Recorded.
Stolen.
Played back from a device hidden beneath Matteo Varric’s son.
Her knees weakened.
Matteo grabbed her elbow before she fell.
Nico whimpered, sensing the shift in her body.
Liana stared at the disc.
“That’s me,” she whispered.
No one spoke.
She looked at Matteo, tears filling her eyes but not falling.
“That song was never online. I never recorded it. I only sang it in one place.”
Matteo’s face darkened.
“Where?”
Liana’s voice came out hollow.
“The hospital nursery. The night before my baby died.”
Dario cursed under his breath.
Dr. Rowan closed her eyes.
Matteo looked at the black disc as if it were a living enemy.
Then Dario’s reader beeped again.
He frowned, scrolling. “There’s more.”
Matteo did not move. “What more?”
Dario’s voice changed.
“It has an activation log.”
“And?”
Dario looked from Nico to Liana.
“This device didn’t start broadcasting three weeks ago.”
Matteo’s expression went still.
“It started seven months ago.”
May you like
The exact month Nico’s mother died.
And in Liana’s arms, the baby opened his wet eyes and stared up at her as though he had finally found the voice that had been haunting his dreams.
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