Chapter 7 - Mia Had Been Watching More Than Anyone Realized
My daughter said very little at first.
Mia was only seven, but she had a way of seeing everything and speaking only when she was sure she understood it.
Two days after the barbecue, she came into my study holding a folded paper napkin.
“I found this by the flowers.”
Inside the napkin was a broken metal clip.
Small.
Silver.
Stamped with the initials RDG—Romano Development Group.
It came from the kind of document binders Javier used for internal files.
“Was it his?” she asked.
I took it from her slowly.
“Where exactly did you find this?”
“Near where he was talking to Leo before he grabbed him.”
She paused.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“He looked scared before you even got there.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Scared before I arrived.
He wasn’t afraid of me catching him hurting a child.
He was afraid of what Leo knew.
Mia had understood it instinctively.
That was the moment I stopped thinking of the barbecue as a family crisis and started seeing it as what it also was:
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The moment a criminal plan failed because a nine-year-old had been paying attention.
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