Chapter 3: What Elena Left Behind
Serena didn't sleep well either.
She lay on the narrow bed in the servants' quarters listening to Lucia breathe in the cot beside her.
The room was clean.
Warm enough.
Safe enough.
That was all she had asked for when she took the job — safe enough, for long enough, to figure out the next step.
She hadn't planned on Lucia making enemies on the first floor.
She turned onto her side and stared at the wall.
The rabbit sat on the windowsill where Lucia always placed it at night.
Old gray fabric catching the pale light from outside.
One ear gone since before Lucia was born.
Serena had tried twice to replace it with a newer version, something softer, something whole.
Lucia had refused both times.
"This one is mine," she'd said.
"The other ones aren't."
Serena had stopped arguing.
She closed her eyes.
In the morning, she would apologize to Mr.
Conti properly.
She would keep her head down.
She would do what she had always done — make herself small enough that no one looked too closely.
That was the plan.
It had been the plan for four years.
---
She was in the kitchen at six, earlier than anyone else on staff.
She was measuring coffee when she heard footsteps behind her that didn't belong to the cook.
She turned.
Damiano Conti stood in the kitchen doorway in a dark shirt, no jacket, looking like a man who had also not slept.
Serena set the coffee down.
"Mr.
Conti.
I'm sorry — I didn't realize you came down this early.
I'll get out of your—"
"Stay."
She stayed.
He moved to the other side of the counter and poured himself a glass of water.
He didn't look at her directly.
He drank half of it standing at the sink.
"Your daughter," he said.
"How old?"
"Three.
She'll be four in the spring."
"She's not afraid of anything."
"She's afraid of plenty of things," Serena said carefully.
"She just doesn't show it."
Damiano set the glass down.
"Where did she get the rabbit?"
The question landed quietly.
But it landed.
Serena felt the shift in the room the same way you feel a change in air pressure before a storm.
Nothing visible.
Just something different.
"It was given to her," she said.
"Before she was born."
"By who?"
"A friend."
Damiano looked at her then.
Fully.
The same way he had looked at her in the hall the day before, after Lucia had made him apologize properly.
"What kind of friend gives a rabbit to a child who isn't born yet?"
Serena's hands were very still on the counter.
"The kind who knew they wouldn't be around to give it in person."
A long silence.
Damiano picked up his water glass again.
He didn't drink from it.
"I'm sorry for the trouble yesterday," Serena said.
"Lucia is — she has strong opinions about fairness.
I'm working on it."
"Don't."
She blinked.
"Don't work on it," he said.
"She was right."
He set the glass in the sink and walked out.
Serena stood alone in the kitchen for a full minute before she remembered to breathe.
---
She didn't see Marco until late afternoon.
He was waiting near the side entrance when she came back from collecting Lucia from the small playroom the estate kept for staff children.
Lucia was asleep against her shoulder, rabbit tucked under one small arm.
Marco held the door.
"Thank you," Serena said.
"Can I walk with you?"
Something in his voice made her slow down.
"Of course."
They walked in silence for a moment.
The corridor was empty.
The afternoon light came through the high windows in long pale strips.
"How long have you had the rabbit?" Marco asked.
Serena stopped walking.
She turned to look at him.
His face was careful.
Too careful.
The face of a man asking a question he already knows the answer to.
"Why?" she said.
"I'm just curious."
"No," she said quietly.
"You're not."
Marco looked at Lucia sleeping on her shoulder.
At the rabbit.
At the blue stitching around the worn gray paws.
"Her name," he said.
"Lucia.
Did you choose it?"
Serena's arms tightened around her daughter.
"Who are you?" she said.
"Who are you actually?"
Marco looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, very quietly: "I'm the person who told your sister to run."
The corridor went completely still.
May you like
Lucia slept on, unbothered, her small fingers curled around one gray ear.
And Serena felt the floor shift beneath her feet, because she had told no one — not a single person in this house, not in any application or document or reference — that she even had a sister.
