Carmen’s breathing was uneven, her pulse hammering in her ears.
She gripped the edges of the kitchen table, her knuckles white, her entire body trembling.
She looked at Marco, her voice sharp, urgent, raw.
“Who the hell is that upstairs?” she demanded.
Marco’s jaw clenched, his hands still curled into fists. Luca stood tense beside them, his gaze dark, unreadable.
Carmen’s voice rose, shaking with fear and fury.
“WHO IS THAT?!”
Without another word, they bolted up the stairs. Carmen reached Matteo’s door first, her hands shaking as she turned the knob.
She pushed the door open—
And froze. Her stomach plummeted. Marco and Luca stopped behind her, their eyes wide with shock.
The room was empty. Not just empty. It was perfectly clean. The bed was made. The toys that had been scattered across the floor earlier? Gone. The blankets Matteo had wrapped himself in that morning? Neatly folded.
It was as if—
As if no one had ever lived there. Carmen took a staggered step inside, her heart pounding violently.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, no, no—”
She rushed to the closet. Threw it open.
Nothing. She yanked open the drawers. Completely empty. Marco turned in a slow circle, his skin crawling.
“Where the f**k is he?” he muttered under his breath.
Luca’s voice was low, wary. “How the hell did he leave the room without us seeing him?”
The air in the house felt wrong. Something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t real.
Marco’s phone rang. A sharp, piercing sound in the suffocating silence. He snatched it up, pressing it to his ear.
“What?” he snapped.
A guard’s voice crackled through the speaker.
“Boss… Matteo’s outside.”
The room spun. Carmen felt her legs go weak. Marco’s grip on the phone tightened.
“Where?”
“At the gate.”
Luca whipped his head toward Marco. Marco turned to Carmen, his expression unreadable.
“He’s outside.”
Carmen stared at him, her breath catching in her throat.
“That’s not possible.”
The three of them stormed down the stairs, moving fast, too fast. The front door had been locked.
The windows in Matteo’s room were on the second floor—if he had jumped, he would have died.
The only way he could have walked outside was through the kitchen.
And yet—
They had been in the kitchen. They had been right there. And no one had passed them. So how the hell had he gotten out? Luca cursed under his breath.
“This isn’t f**king right,” he muttered.
Marco pushed open the front doors, his eyes darting toward the gates.
And there—
There stood Matteo. His tiny figure was perfectly still, standing just outside the mansion’s gates.
A small, navy-blue suitcase sat by his feet.
And when he saw them—
His lips curled into a soft, innocent smile.
“Hi, Mama,” he said.