Chapter 3 - The Sketches in the Dark
By 7:30 the following morning, the front of the Thorne estate sounded like a commercial shipyard.
Pneumatic drills, diamond-blade saws, and the roaring engines of three industrial flatbed trucks obliterated the stillness of Blackstone Boulevard. Scarlet wheeled herself to the grand bay window of her suite, pulling back the heavy velvet curtains.
Through the falling snow, sixteen men in high-visibility jackets were working under floodlights. A specialized masonry crew was setting heated bluestone slabs over a newly graded incline, while a commercial plumbing van sat idling in the driveway.
A knock sounded at her door.
It wasn't Ruth. It was Garrison.
He was dressed in dark trousers and an ivory cashmere sweater with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, revealing dense, faded ink—a maritime compass, Latin inscriptions, and old prison marks from a youth he had long since buried under billions in legitimate maritime shipping.
“Breakfast is in the solarium,” he said, stepping aside to give her clearance.
Scarlet wheeled her chair into the hallway. The house was magnificent—soaring plaster ceilings, oil paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, and floors of herringbone parquet polished to an obsidian shine.
The solarium was a glass-walled sanctuary overlooking the snow-covered formal gardens. In the center sat an antique table loaded with silver cloches: scrambled eggs with shaved truffles, crisp pancetta, fresh brioche, and freshly squeezed blood orange juice.
Leo was already seated at the far end of the long table.
He didn't have a plate. He had Scarlet’s spiral notebook open before him, gripping the three-inch pencil so tightly the skin over his small knuckles was stark white.
Scarlet rolled her chair to the table, deliberately taking a seat two places away from him—close enough to offer presence, far enough to avoid crowding his boundaries.
She poured herself black coffee, her hands steady.
“Good morning, Leo,” she said softly, reaching for a piece of toast.
The boy’s shoulders tensed, but he didn't run. His pencil continued its furious, rhythmic scratching against the wood-pulp paper.
Garrison sat at the head of the table, watching the boy with a fierce, quiet intensity. He had paid pediatric psychiatrists from Zurich, speech pathologists from Manhattan, and behavioral neurologists fifty thousand dollars a month to sit in this very room. Leo had thrown plates at them. He had bitten an orderly. He had retreated into a catatonic stupor that had nearly broken Garrison’s heart.
Yet here was the boy, breathing the same air as an abandoned schoolteacher, drawing without stopping.
Scarlet didn't ask to see the drawing. She ate her breakfast in comfortable, measured silence, commenting once on how the snow looked like powdered sugar on the hedges outside.
After twenty minutes, Leo abruptly stopped.
He set the stub of the pencil down with agonizing precision, aligning it with the spiral wire of the pad. Then, without lifting his head, his small fingers pushed the notebook across the linen tablecloth.
It slid to a halt beside Scarlet’s coffee cup.
Garrison’s breath hitched in his throat.
Scarlet looked down at the page.
It was not a child’s drawing. It was an intricate, terrifying map.
A high-walled courtyard rendered in charcoal-dark graphite strokes. A massive wrought-iron gate marked with three diagonal slashes. In the center of the courtyard sat a broken fountain shaped like a kneeling angel. And beneath the fountain, Leo had drawn four tiny stick figures trapped inside a square box, with an arrow pointing toward a black van bearing a stylized white crest: a coiled viper biting its own tail.
Scarlet’s blood ran cold.
She looked at the symbol. As an educator who had spent years evaluating children dealing with trauma, she recognized the horrific specificity of the sketch. This was not fantasy; it was testimony.
Garrison leaned forward, his dark eyes locking onto the paper.
The air in the solarium vanished.
The teacup in Garrison’s hand shattered. Hot porcelain and tea spilled across the pristine linen, but he didn't flinch. His eyes were wide, dilated with an absolute, primeval fury.
“Leo,” Garrison’s voice was barely a whisper, vibrating with terrifying tension. “Where did you see that angel?”
The boy did not answer. He slipped out of his chair, cast one quick, haunted glance at Scarlet, and fled through the French doors toward the library.
Scarlet looked at Garrison, her heart hammering against her ribs. “What is that mark, Garrison? What did he draw?”
Garrison rose from his chair, towering over the table. The polite, civilized host was gone. Standing before her was the predator who commanded the Providence underworld.
“That crest belongs to the Moretti family,” Garrison said, his voice flat as an open grave. “They ran the human trafficking rings out of the Boston terminals until my family put their leadership into concrete pilings eight years ago.”
He picked up the notebook, his fingers tracing the drawing of the kneeling angel.
“Three years ago, my wife took Leo to visit her sister in Newport. They never arrived. Her car was found in the bay. Her body washed up two days later. Leo was found wandering the shoreline forty-eight hours after that—hypothermic, dehydrated, and mute.”
Scarlet looked at the four small figures drawn beneath the fountain.
“He wasn't in that car when it went into the water,” she realized, horror dawning in her chest. “He was taken somewhere else.”
“He was taken to the Moretti holding pens,” Garrison whispered. “And someone in this city helped them do it.”
Before Scarlet could speak, the heavy brass bell at the estate’s main entrance echoed through the halls.
Dom appeared at the solarium door, his heavy frame silhouetted against the morning light. His face was grim, his hand resting inside his tailored overcoat.
“Boss,” Dom said. “We have visitors at the gate.”
May you like
Garrison didn't look up from the sketch. “Who?”
“Vivian Callaway. And her boy Preston.” Dom spat onto the terrace floor. “They brought two private security guards and an injunction from the Family Court. They say you’re harboring a fugitive spouse.”
