Chapter 17 - Hopper Goes Missing
Rosa did not remember leaving the Vale tower.
She remembered Alessandro shouting orders. Enzo calling three teams at once. Miguel cursing because his chair could not move fast enough. Lily clutching Hopper so tightly one of the rabbit’s stitched eyes nearly popped loose.
Then the SUV doors slammed, and Manhattan became a blur of glass and sirens.
“Call the house again,” Rosa said.
Enzo was already doing it. “No answer from the east guard. North playroom line dead. Bellini’s phone goes to voicemail.”
Lily watched every face.
Something wrong?
Rosa signed with shaking hands.
We check home.
Lily frowned.
Home hurt?
Rosa could not lie.
Maybe.
Lily’s face changed.
Not fear this time.
Anger.
Alessandro sat opposite them, silent in a way Rosa now recognized as dangerous restraint. He had promised Lily no more bad houses. He had turned his mansion into a school, a refuge, a place with open doors.
And someone had entered it while they were away.
When they reached the mansion, the gates were open.
That was wrong.
So wrong that even the birds seemed silent.
The SUV barely stopped before Alessandro was out. Rosa followed despite Enzo’s warning. Miguel came too, refusing to wait in the car. Lily tried to run after them, but Rosa caught her.
“No,” Rosa said aloud, then signed. Stay with me.
Inside, the mansion looked untouched at first.
Then Rosa saw the sunflower stems snapped in the front hall.
One by one.
Heads crushed against the marble.
She covered Lily’s eyes.
Alessandro saw them too.
His face hardened into something almost old. The man he used to be flickered near the surface, waiting to be invited back.
Then a small sound came from the library.
Dr. Bellini was alive.
He sat on the floor near the fireplace, blood on his temple, wrists tied with a silk curtain cord. Enzo cut him free.
“The children?” Alessandro asked.
“Safe,” Bellini rasped. “Teachers locked them in the sensory room. I gave the code before they hit me.”
Rosa nearly collapsed with relief.
“Who?” Enzo demanded.
Bellini looked at Rosa. “Not Gabriel.”
Alessandro went still.
“Who?”
Bellini swallowed. “Vivian.”
The room froze.
“She is under house arrest,” Enzo said.
Bellini laughed bitterly. “Apparently her ankle monitor was more decorative than legal.”
Rosa held Lily tighter.
Vivian Vale had returned to the house where everything had fallen apart.
Alessandro’s voice was low. “Why?”
Bellini pointed toward the desk.
A note waited there.
Not typed.
Written in elegant black ink.
Alessandro picked it up.
Rosa read over his shoulder.
You stole my wedding, my father, my name, and my future. So I took the only thing your little saint loves more than truth.
Lily pushed between them.
She looked at the desk.
Then her hands flew to her chest.
Hopper?
Rosa turned.
The rabbit was gone.
For a second, no one understood the scale of it.
It was only a toy.
A stitched, faded rabbit.
But to Lily, Hopper was safety. Hopper was Papa’s secret. Hopper was the thing she held in court, in smoke, in nightmares, in strange rooms full of adults deciding her future.
Vivian had not taken the child.
She had taken the symbol.
And that was cruel enough to be intimate.
Lily’s face crumpled.
Rosa dropped to her knees. “Baby—”
Lily pushed her hands away.
Where Hopper? she signed.
Rosa could not answer.
Lily turned to Alessandro.
You promised.
The words shattered him.
He knelt slowly.
“I know,” he signed.
Promise broken.
Alessandro’s face tightened with pain. “I will bring him back.”
Lily’s eyes filled.
Promises break.
Then she ran from the room.
Rosa started after her, but Miguel touched her arm.
“Let me.”
He rolled after Lily down the hall.
Rosa watched him go, then turned on Alessandro.
“She is not a piece in your war.”
“I know.”
“No, you do not. Because to you this is strategy. Files. Leverage. Boardrooms. Enemies. But to her, that rabbit is the last thing that felt safe.”
Alessandro absorbed every word.
Then he said quietly, “You are right.”
That stopped her.
He looked at the crushed sunflowers in the hall.
“I built a refuge and believed walls made it real. I was wrong.”
Enzo entered holding a tablet. “Vivian left through the south service door. Camera caught one vehicle. Gray coupe. Plates stolen.”
“Where?” Alessandro asked.
“Brooklyn. Old Vale warehouse.”
Rosa’s stomach tightened.
Vivian wanted them to follow.
Of course she did.
Alessandro turned to Enzo. “No one goes in loud. No guns unless necessary. No theatrics.”
Rosa stared at him.
He met her eyes.
“I heard you.”
Miguel returned alone.
“Where is Lily?” Rosa asked.
“In Isabella’s classroom,” he said. “Writing something.”
A minute later, Lily walked in holding a sheet of paper.
She had drawn Hopper in the center.
Around him, she had drawn flames, flowers, and one woman in a white dress with sharp teeth.
At the bottom, she had written in uneven letters:
BRING HIM HOME.
Alessandro took the paper like a command from a queen.
He signed carefully.
Yes.
Lily pointed at him.
No broken.
His throat moved.
No broken.
That night, Alessandro went to Brooklyn with Enzo and three men.
Rosa stayed with Lily because motherhood demanded what vengeance could not.
But Miguel looked out the window long after the cars left.
Then he whispered, “Vivian does not want the rabbit.”
Rosa turned.
“What?”
Miguel’s face had gone distant, memory pulling him backward.
“She wants what is inside him.”
“There is nothing inside Hopper anymore. The drive was removed.”
Miguel shook his head.
“I made two hiding places.”
Rosa stopped breathing.
May you like
Miguel looked at her.
“The second secret is still in the rabbit.”
