Chapter 20 - THE BRUISE AND THE COOKIE
The Maybach returned to the Caruso estate under an escort that resembled a head-of-state motorcade. Nicholas did not let go of Lucy for the entirety of the forty-minute drive. He held her securely against his chest, feeling the fragile beat of her tiny heart, her small fingers clutching the lapel of his charcoal suit.
When they entered the grand foyer, Arthur was waiting by the foot of the twin curved staircases. His eyes were red-rimmed, his posture slightly stooped—the first time Nicholas had ever seen the butler look his true age.
"Arthur," Nicholas commanded as the heavy mahogany doors clicked shut behind them, sealed by four armed bodyguards. "Take Maria to the master suite. Have the physician examine her and administer a sedative. She is in shock."
"Nicholas..." Maria tried to speak, reaching out toward Lucy, but her knees buckled under the weight of the day's revelations.
"She stays with me," Nicholas said gently, his tone leaving no room for argument. "No one touches her. No one comes within ten paces of this child except me. Do you understand?"
Maria looked at him, seeing for the first time not the terrifying mafia Don who ruled the city, but the father who had unwittingly shared her child’s blood. She nodded weakly, allowing Arthur to guide her gently up the stairs.
Nicholas carried Lucy into the private dining salon. He sat her down on a high-backed velvet chair and pulled a plate from the sideboard. On it sat three fresh butter cookies that the chef had prepared earlier.
Lucy looked at the cookies, then immediately shoved both hands behind her back, her small face tightening with apprehension.
"I won't eat them," she whispered, her chin trembling. "I'm good, Uncle Nicholas. I didn't touch them."
Nicholas knelt before the chair, bringing his face level with hers. He looked at the soft bandage wrapping her tiny wrist. The four purple bruises beneath that gauze had ignited a war that had now exposed twenty-three years of lies.
"Lucy," Nicholas said, his voice softer than any man on the East Coast had ever heard it. "Look at me, sweetheart."
She blinked her large, dark eyes at him.
"You don't have to call me Uncle Nicholas anymore if you don't want to," he said, swallowing past a knot in his throat. "And you never have to be afraid of a cookie again. You can eat every single one on this plate, and no one will ever yell at you. No one will ever touch you. I swear that to you on my life."
Lucy looked at the plate, then looked back at him. "The lady said I was bad."
Nicholas’s entire body went rigid. "What lady, Lucy?"
"The lady with the pretty watch," Lucy whispered, pointing a tiny finger toward her left wrist, exactly where the bruises were. "She came in my room before Mommy packed the bags. She squeezed my hand real hard. She said... she said if I ate the cookies, the big boss would throw me in the ocean."
"What did the lady look like, Lucy?" Nicholas asked, his tone carefully neutral so as not to scare her, though the veins in his neck were pulsing with murderous adrenaline.
"She had silver hair," Lucy said softly. "Like a queen. And she had a shiny bird on her coat."
Nicholas stopped breathing.
A shiny bird.
A diamond brooch shaped like an egret in flight.
May you like
He turned his head slowly toward the grand wall behind him. There, hanging in an ornate gilded frame, was the oil painting of his mother, Isabella Caruso, completed two years before her supposed death from pancreatic cancer.
Pinned to the lapel of Isabella’s painted velvet coat was an antique platinum egret brooch with sapphire eyes.
