Chapter 4 - Case Seven Beneath the Music Room
The clue on the torn card stayed in Vittorio’s mind all night.
When the song stops… Case 7.
By morning, the music room had become the center of everything.
Nico insisted on being there.
He sat in his wheelchair near the open French window while Vittorio searched. The boy’s fear from the previous day had not fully faded, but curiosity had begun to rise through it. He kept the peppermint wrapper flattened carefully in his pocket, as if even that small thing connected him to the destroyed gift.
“Maybe it means the instrument cases,” Nico suggested.
Vittorio turned toward the far wall.
Stacked there, in two careful columns, were old instrument cases from years of family concerts, charity recitals, and Bianca’s constant social performances. Violin cases. A cello case. Two clarinet cases. A trumpet case no one had opened in a decade.
Each one had a brass inventory number burned into a leather tag.
Vittorio felt the first flicker of direction.
He began reading them one by one.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Then, tucked at the bottom behind a heavier cello case, he found Case 7.
It was a slim black violin case, older than the rest, with wear along one handle and a broken latch that had once been repaired with dark thread.
He knew it immediately.
It had belonged to Serena.
Vittorio carried it to the carpet and knelt beside it while Nico watched, silent and intent.
Inside, there was no violin.
Only a small portable recorder, a sealed envelope, and a folded page of sheet music with several measures circled in red.
Vittorio’s fingers shook only once before he steadied them.
He opened the envelope first.
Inside was a single handwritten note.
If Nico is reading this, Bianca found the first gift before it could do what it was meant to do. If you found Case 7, keep going. Do not trust what Bianca told you about me. The proof is hidden where the metronome stops. — S
Nico leaned forward in his chair. “Who wrote that?”
Vittorio looked at the blue ink.
At the same elegant slant he had seen on the torn tag.
“At this point,” he said quietly, “I think I know.”
He turned on the recorder.
Static hissed.
Then a woman’s voice came through—soft, a little older than he remembered, but unmistakable.
“Happy birthday, Nico,” the voice said. “If you’re hearing this, then I finally got something into your hands. I can’t explain everything yet. Not safely. But if your father is with you, tell him St. Aveline was never about healing. And tell him the metronome knows what Bianca stole.”
Nico went very still.
Vittorio didn’t move at all.
He heard the breath leave his own lungs before he realized he had taken one.
“Who is that?” Nico whispered.
Vittorio looked at him, and something in his expression must have answered, because Nico’s eyes widened slowly.
“Is that… Mama?”
Vittorio closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he nodded once.
“Yes.”
Nico made no sound for several seconds.
Then, very softly, “I thought Aunt Bianca said Mama went away because she didn’t want us anymore.”
Rage passed across Vittorio’s face so quickly it looked almost like pain.
“She lied.”
The boy blinked fast, trying to understand something too large for a seven-year-old heart to fit all at once.
Vittorio moved to the old metronome on the side table.
He set it down on the carpet and wound it with the brass key from the gift box.
The arm began to click.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Then, after several beats, the ticking faltered.
The wooden base gave a faint, strange rattle.
Vittorio turned it over.
There, concealed beneath the felt bottom, was a slit barely wide enough to hide a small metal keycard and a second note.
This note held only six words.
Ask who kept paying the clinic.
The metronome had stopped.
May you like
And the path Serena had laid out was becoming horrifyingly clear.
---
