Chapter 2 - The Rhythm of the Walls
The second-floor nursery corridor of the Moretti estate was a place where sunlight went to die. Heavy velvet drapes blocked out the harsh November sleet, and the walls were lined with heavy, sound-dampening oak panels that made footsteps sound muted and hollow, like walking across the bottom of an empty swimming pool. As I pushed my cleaning cart down the long hallway, the silence was absolute—heavy, oppressive, and thick with tension.
Inside the nursery suite, six-year-old Mia Moretti was supposed to be locked away in timeout following Allison’s departure. Instead, there was no sound of screaming, no crashing of porcelain, no violent tantrums. Just a strange, rhythmic tapping.
Tap. Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
I stopped my cart outside heavy double doors painted a soft, muted cream. My background as an accountant meant I was trained to listen for anomalies—the rhythmic patterns that signal a machine working out of sync, or a code repeating itself under stress. For three weeks, every nanny had reported that Mia’s fits erupted completely at random, triggered by nothing at all. But as I stood with my ear pressed lightly against the cold wood of the nursery door, I realized the sound wasn't chaotic. It was structured.
Tap. Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.
It was the precise cadence of the antique grandfather clock standing at the far end of the hallway, synchronized with the heavy, vibrating thrum of the commercial HVAC unit hidden inside the wall cavity, and overlaid with the rapid, shallow, terrified breathing of a child trying to make herself invisible.
I turned the brass handle. It wasn't locked from the outside—a detail that immediately contradicted the rumor that Luca Moretti kept his daughter under maximum-security isolation. The door clicked open silently on oiled hinges.
The room was shadowed and cold. In the center of a massive antique iron bed sat a tiny girl with tangled dark hair and oversized gray pajamas that swallowed her small frame. Mia wasn't throwing things. She wasn't screaming. She was sitting with her knees pulled tightly against her chest, rocking back and forth in exact time with the grandfather clock, her small fingers rhythmically tapping against the headboard.
When she saw me step into the room, her dark eyes—so impossibly similar to the fierce, cold gaze of her father—widened not with anger, but with a paralyzing, defensive terror. She didn't lunge. She didn't scratch. She curled into a tighter ball and whispered a single sentence that froze the blood in my veins:
"If you make the metal scream again, he'll come back through the floor."
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I froze, stepping fully into the room and letting the heavy door click shut behind me. "Who'll come back, sweetie? Who makes the metal scream?"
Before Mia could answer, heavy, measured footsteps echoed up the grand staircase. The distinctive, authoritative click of expensive Italian leather shoes hitting the marble signaled the return of the master of the house. Luca Moretti had arrived early, and he was walking straight toward the nursery.
