Chapter 2 - THE GOLD CLOCK
The clock was worth approximately $48,000.
Gold.
Sapphires around the face.
French manufacture.
Early twentieth century.
It had belonged to my grandmother.
I cared about the clock for sentimental reasons.
Someone else cared because stealing something expensive created an easy accusation.
Marco placed the towel inside a clean evidence tray.
Pino sniffed once.
Then again.
Walked past Sofia.
Past two guards.
Past me.
Straight toward Renata.
He stopped beside her.
Sat.
Looked up.
Renata went white.
“This is absurd.”
I agreed again.
“A dog is not a courtroom.”
She blinked.
“But it gives us a reason to preserve more information.”
Marco checked the cameras.
Renata had entered the staff corridor at 9:12 that morning carrying folded towels.
She remained there for six minutes.
Sofia had been upstairs cleaning guest rooms.
At 9:19, Renata left empty-handed.
No footage showed the inside of the locker room.
But electronic entry logs recorded her master key.
Renata shrugged.
“I manage the staff. I enter that room constantly.”
True.
Then Marco found something more.
At 9:14, Lucia came through the service corridor carrying crayons.
She was not supposed to be there.
Sofia sometimes brought her daughter to the estate when childcare failed, with prior permission from management.
That day was one of those days.
Lucia disappeared from camera view around the same time Renata entered.
At 9:17 she reappeared.
Running.
That matched her story.
Still not proof of planting.
Then Marco asked:
“Who first reported the clock missing?”
Renata.
Of course.
At 10:03.
She claimed she entered the drawing room for inventory and discovered it gone.
I asked:
“When was it last documented?”
Marco checked.
A house inventory photo had been taken at 8:40 that morning for insurance updating.
Clock present.
Renata entered the drawing room at 8:52.
Then the east wing butler entered at 9:31.
Clock absent.
The theft window narrowed.
Renata had opportunity.
So did others.
Then Marco pulled a service elevator camera.
At 9:03, Renata entered carrying a folded white linen bundle.
One corner exposed something gold.
Not definitive.
Enough.
Renata stopped arguing.
She changed tactics.
“Sofia has been asking questions she shouldn’t.”
Sofia stared.
“What questions?”
Renata ignored her.
She looked at me.
“This is bigger than a clock.”
Finally.
I leaned against the console table.
“Good.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You should dismiss the child.”
“No.”
“Lorenzo.”
The use of my first name was deliberate.
A reminder that she had served my family for thirteen years.
That she knew my father.
My late mother.
The old system.
“I said no.”
Lucia remained beside Sofia.
Pino beside Lucia.
Marco and two security staff stood nearby.
Witnesses.
Renata understood.
She looked at Sofia.
Then said:
“She opened your father’s study.”
The room changed.
My father had been dead four years.
His private study remained mostly preserved.
I rarely entered.
Not because it was sacred.
Because I disliked what it represented.
“What did she find?”
Sofia looked genuinely confused.
“I’ve never been inside.”
Renata smiled.
“Ask her about the blue ledger.”
I watched Sofia.
Nothing.
No recognition.
Then Lucia whispered:
“Mommy found a blue book.”
Sofia looked down at her daughter.
“What?”
“In the closet.”
I felt something move in my chest.
“What closet?”
Lucia pointed upstairs.
“The room with the lion.”
My father’s study had a bronze lion bookend on his desk.
Sofia’s face went pale.
“Lucia.”
“I was hiding.”
The child began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
Sofia crouched.
“You went in there?”
Lucia nodded.
“I wanted my rabbit.”
Apparently her stuffed rabbit had been taken from the nursery by another child during a staff-family luncheon weeks earlier.
Lucia followed it through the house.
Ended up inside my father’s study.
Behind a wardrobe door, she found a narrow wall compartment.
Inside:
A blue ledger.
She brought it to her mother because it had “numbers like Mommy’s grocery book.”
Sofia stared at me.
“I thought it was trash.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it in the housekeeping office because I didn’t know whose it was.”
Renata interrupted.
“And then she began asking about the names inside.”
Sofia shook her head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I asked why my brother’s name was there.”
That stopped me.
“Your brother?”
Sofia nodded slowly.
“Mateo Alvarez.”
I knew the name.
Not personally.
From somewhere.
Then Marco went still.
“Port Newark.”
My head turned.
Sofia looked between us.
“My brother worked at the Duca Newark terminal.”
Worked.
Past tense.
“When?”
“Until he died.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
She looked directly at me.
“Forklift accident.”
I remembered.
Six years earlier.
A twenty-eight-year-old dockworker.
Crushed during an overnight shift.
Settlement paid to family.
Internal investigation blamed equipment failure plus procedural error.
I had been in Europe at the time.
My father still controlled operations.
Sofia continued:
“The blue book had Mateo’s name.”
“Beside what?”
She swallowed.
“Cash amounts.”
Renata closed her eyes.
There it was.
The clock had never been about theft.
May you like
It was about getting Sofia and Lucia out of my house before Sofia understood what she had accidentally found.
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