Chapter 3 - The Voice on the Baby Monitor
Luca grabbed the monitor.
“Who is this?”
Static answered.
Then silence.
Marco moved to the windows.
Hannah locked the front door again even though she knew a lock had become symbolic at this point.
Millie sat frozen.
Gabriel remained asleep against Luca’s chest.
That was somehow the strangest part.
Adults were staring into darkness, holding secrets that could ruin lives.
The baby slept.
Marco checked the street.
“Vehicle’s gone.”
“What vehicle?” Hannah asked.
“Black sedan.”
“Did you see plates?”
“No.”
Luca pressed buttons on the monitor.
Nothing.
Hannah looked at the diaper bag.
“Where is the camera?”
“My house.”
Her eyes widened.
“This monitor is connected to your nursery?”
“Yes.”
“Then someone is inside your house.”
Luca was already moving.
Marco blocked him.
“Think.”
“My son’s room—”
“Gabriel is here.”
Luca’s breathing slowed.
Marco continued.
“They want you home.”
Hannah understood.
Just like the night Sofia died.
A false emergency.
A route.
A predictable response.
“Don’t go,” she said.
Luca looked at her.
“They’re repeating it.”
He knew she was right.
That made him angrier.
Marco called his security team.
No answer.
He tried another number.
Nothing.
“Phones are down.”
Hannah held up hers.
“No signal.”
Millie whispered, “Landline.”
Hannah moved behind the counter.
Dead.
Luca looked toward the kitchen.
“Back exit?”
“Yes.”
“Marco, check it.”
Marco disappeared.
Luca remained beside Millie.
“Finish what you were saying.”
Millie shook her head.
“Not here.”
“Here is exactly where we are.”
“She made me promise.”
“Sofia is dead.”
Millie flinched.
Luca’s voice softened.
“And I have a son who almost lost both parents in one night.”
Millie stared at Gabriel.
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“She came in around one-thirty.”
“Why?”
“She said she needed somewhere no one would look for her.”
“Why Millie’s?”
Millie looked at Hannah.
“Because of her father.”
Hannah frowned.
“My father?”
“Daniel.”
A chill went through her.
Her father had been dead five years.
“What did my dad have to do with Sofia?”
Millie closed her eyes.
“He knew her.”
“No.”
“Hannah—”
“My father was a city accountant.”
“Yes.”
“He barely knew anyone.”
“That wasn’t true.”
Hannah stepped backward.
The diner suddenly felt too small.
Her father, Daniel Brooks, had spent twenty-three years auditing municipal contracts.
He had died in what police called a hit-and-run after leaving work late one night.
No witnesses.
No arrest.
Hannah’s mother had believed the death destroyed him retroactively, turning every unanswered phone call and unopened file into a possible clue.
Hannah had refused to live that way.
Now Millie was looking at her with guilt.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Sofia had documents your father collected.”
Luca’s head turned.
“What documents?”
“I never saw them.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Daniel told me.”
Hannah sat down.
“When?”
“The week before he died.”
Five years.
Five years Millie had known something.
“You never told me.”
“He made me promise.”
“Everyone keeps making promises to dead people.”
Millie’s face crumpled.
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
Hannah felt anger rise.
“Safe from what?”
Luca answered.
“People like me.”
She looked at him.
His honesty hurt more than denial would have.
Marco returned.
“Back alley clear.”
Luca asked Millie, “Who came with Sofia?”
Millie took a breath.
“Matteo Vale.”
Marco went rigid.
Luca did not move.
Hannah remembered the receipt.
M.VALE-04.
“Who is Matteo Vale?”
Marco stared at Luca.
Luca answered.
“My consigliere.”
Hannah understood the word.
Advisor.
Right hand.
Trusted man.
Family, in every way that mattered within Luca’s world.
“He was here with your wife?”
“Yes,” Millie said. “They argued.”
“About what?”
“I couldn’t hear everything. Sofia kept saying she wouldn’t let Gabriel inherit it.”
Luca looked at his son.
Millie continued.
“She said, ‘Daniel was right. It never stops unless someone stops it.’”
Hannah felt her throat tighten.
Her father.
Again.
“What happened next?”
“Matteo left first. Sofia stayed maybe ten minutes. Then she asked me for an envelope.”
“What did she put inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
Millie stared toward the kitchen.
“I hid it.”
Luca took a step forward.
“Where?”
“Daniel’s old place.”
Hannah almost laughed.
“My father’s house was sold.”
“Not the house.”
Millie looked directly at her.
“The storage locker.”
Hannah remembered.
Her father had rented a small storage unit near the river for tax records and old furniture.
After he died, Hannah had assumed her mother emptied it.
“I thought Mom closed it.”
“She tried. The account had been prepaid.”
“For five years?”
“Ten.”
Hannah stared.
Her father had prepaid a storage unit for a decade shortly before his death.
“You have the key?”
Millie nodded.
“Where?”
“In my office.”
Marco checked the windows again.
“We need to move.”
Luca asked Hannah, “Are you coming?”
She nearly said no.
She should have.
She was a waitress.
She had a rent payment due next Tuesday.
Her biggest concern yesterday had been whether the diner needed more half-and-half.
Now a crime boss was asking her to follow him toward evidence connected to two dead people, one of whom was her father.
“Yes.”
Marco looked at her.
“No.”
Hannah turned.
“Excuse me?”
“You stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“This isn’t your world.”
“My father’s name is apparently buried in it.”
“That doesn’t make it safer.”
“It makes it mine.”
Luca studied her.
“She comes.”
Marco sighed.
Twenty minutes later they entered Millie’s tiny office.
The key was taped beneath an old framed photograph.
Hannah recognized her father in the picture.
He was standing beside Millie outside the diner twenty years earlier.
There was another person in the photo.
A younger man Hannah had never noticed before.
Luca leaned closer.
“That’s my father.”
Hannah looked at him.
“Your father knew mine?”
“Apparently.”
On the back of the photograph, Daniel Brooks had written:
THREE MEN CAN KEEP A SECRET IF TWO DECIDE TO TELL THE TRUTH.
Below it was a number.
Millie whispered, “Locker.”
They drove in two vehicles.
Luca kept Gabriel with him.
Hannah sat in the rear beside the baby.
The city looked different at five in the morning.
Every traffic light felt like surveillance.
Every parked car became suspicious.
At the storage facility, Marco used the gate key.
Locker 1187 sat at the far end of a concrete corridor.
Hannah inserted the key.
Her hand trembled.
Luca noticed.
“You don’t have to open it.”
“Yes, I do.”
She turned the lock.
Inside were boxes.
An old desk.
Two filing cabinets.
A child’s bicycle Hannah recognized as hers.
For a moment, grief overwhelmed everything else.
Her father had saved her bicycle.
Luca remained silent.
They searched.
The envelope was inside the desk drawer.
MILLIE had written SOFIA across the front.
Luca opened it.
Inside was a small notebook.
A flash drive.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed Sofia standing beside Daniel Brooks.
Taken years before Gabriel was born.
On the reverse, Sofia had written:
IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME, THE RECEIPTS ARE THE MAP.
Hannah looked at Luca.
“The receipts?”
He turned the notebook toward her.
Page after page contained dates, times and restaurant transaction numbers.
Most were from Millie’s.
Hannah recognized the format instantly.
Then she saw the final page.
Her own name had been written across the top.
HANNAH BROOKS.
Beneath it was one sentence.
SHE DOESN’T KNOW YET. KEEP HER OUT UNTIL THERE IS NO CHOICE.
Hannah stared.
Her phone suddenly regained signal.
It vibrated.
One new message.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
It showed Hannah leaving Millie’s less than an hour earlier.
Underneath were six words.
STOP SAVING PAPER OR SHE DIES.
May you like
Attached below the message was a second photograph.
Hannah’s mother was standing outside her apartment.
