Chapter 2 - A Ribbon from the Past
The music room emptied under Vittorio’s command.
Bodyguard 1 was dragged out by staff after finally catching his breath. Bodyguard 2 backed away on his own, pale and silent. Bianca remained in the doorway only until Vittorio turned and told her, in a voice so cold it stopped the air in the room, to get out before he forgot she was his sister.
She left without another word.
Only after the hall fell quiet did Vittorio kneel beside Nico again.
His son still held the peppermint candy in one fist. With the other hand, he pointed shakily toward the ruined gift box on the carpet.
“She smashed it,” he whispered. “She didn’t even let me open it.”
“I know.” Vittorio kept his voice steady. “You’re safe now.”
That should have been enough to calm any child.
But Nico looked past him at the broken cardboard, his lower lip trembling. “Dad… it was for me.”
Something in the way he said it stopped Vittorio.
Not childish disappointment.
Something more personal.
He helped Nico back into the wheelchair first, adjusted the footrests, and checked his hands and elbows one more time. Then he crossed the room and crouched over the crushed gift box.
At first glance, it looked ruined beyond meaning—flattened sides, torn ribbon, split lid. But as he carefully lifted the broken top flap, a few items slid loose across the carpet.
A strip of pale blue ribbon.
A cracked paper tag.
And a small brass winding key no bigger than Vittorio’s thumb.
He picked it up and frowned.
It wasn’t a normal gift-box ornament. It looked like the kind used to wind an old mechanical music box.
Nico saw it from the chair and suddenly straightened.
“That was inside,” he said quickly. “And there was a card too. Aunt Bianca grabbed it before you came.”
Vittorio looked up sharply. “You saw the card?”
Nico nodded. “Only a little. It said my name. And…” He shut his eyes, trying to remember. “And… ‘music room.’ I think. Maybe.”
Vittorio turned the torn paper tag over.
The front had been ripped badly enough that only a few words remained.
For Nico — When the… song… stops… Case 7
At the very bottom of the torn tag, there was a single letter written in elegant blue ink.
S
Vittorio felt something go still inside him.
He reached for the ribbon next.
The moment he touched it, he recognized the knot style.
Not because it was rare.
Because he had once watched someone tie gifts that way every Christmas, every birthday, every ordinary little surprise.
Serena.
He looked up too fast.
Nico had gone quiet again.
“Who gave you this box?” Vittorio asked.
“A lady at the downstairs hall,” Nico said. “I didn’t know her. But…” His little face tightened with concentration. “She smelled like the old music room upstairs.”
“What does that mean?”
“The one Mama used to play in.”
The answer hit Vittorio harder than the scene with Bianca had.
Serena’s rooms had been sealed after she disappeared. Her instruments had been cataloged, though never removed. Her perfume—orange blossom and cedar—had faintly lingered in the house for months afterward. Nico had been too young to remember much from those years.
But apparently he had remembered more than anyone knew.
“Did you talk to her?” Vittorio asked carefully.
Nico shook his head. “She only smiled and gave me the box. Then Aunt Bianca saw me and got mad.”
Vittorio lowered his eyes to the brass key in his hand.
A torn card. A hidden instruction. A ribbon Serena used to tie. A final blue initial.
And Bianca hadn’t merely disliked the gift.
She had panicked.
That was why she had crushed it before Nico could open it. That was why she had bodyguards tear his son from the chair. It wasn’t just cruelty.
She had been trying to stop him from seeing what was inside.
Vittorio rose slowly, the brass key still in his palm.
“Nico,” he said, forcing calm back into his voice, “do you know what ‘Case 7’ means?”
Nico shook his head.
Neither did Vittorio.
Not yet.
But now he knew two things with absolute certainty.
The box had not arrived by accident.
May you like
And Bianca had recognized it before anyone else did.
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