Chapter 4 - Seven Bluebirds
I did not show Adrien the threat.
That was my first mistake.
My second was thinking I could handle Carlo Varelli alone.
For the next two days, I avoided Booth Seven.
I worked my shifts.
I visited Grandma.
I answered Adrien’s questions with the fewest words possible.
And whenever he came close, I found a reason to move away.
By the third night, he cornered me in Lavelle’s service hallway.
“You’re avoiding me.”
“I’m working.”
“You’ve polished that same wineglass for four minutes.”
I looked down.
He was right.
“I’m tired.”
“You’ve been tired since the day I met you.”
“Then maybe this is normal.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Where is the envelope?”
I froze.
“What envelope?”
“The one you’ve checked inside your apron six times tonight.”
I stared at him.
“You notice too much.”
“It keeps me alive.”
“So does minding your own business.”
His expression hardened.
I tried to walk around him.
He stepped into my path.
Not touching me.
Never touching me.
“Lena.”
I hated how gently he said my name.
I pulled out the envelope.
His face went cold as he read the threat.
“Who gave you this?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Two nights ago.”
His head lifted.
“Two nights.”
“I was trying to protect Grandma.”
“By hiding a threat from the person who already put security outside her door?”
“I didn’t know if your security was the problem.”
That landed.
I showed him my father’s note.
DO NOT TRUST THE MAN WHO STANDS AT HIS RIGHT HAND.
He read it again.
“Marco was a child then.”
“I know.”
“But you think the message may still matter.”
“I think whoever took that picture got into a guarded hospital room.”
Adrien was silent.
Then he called Marco.
“Change every guard on Mrs. Reyes’s floor.”
Marco frowned.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“Boss—”
“Now.”
Marco left.
Adrien looked at me.
“You’re moving into my house.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
“No.”
“You’ve been threatened.”
“My grandmother was threatened.”
“Which means they know how to control you.”
“I’m not moving into a Mafia boss’s mansion.”
“Why?”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“I have a studio apartment.”
“That door can be opened with a credit card.”
“It has two locks.”
“So does a gas station bathroom.”
I crossed my arms.
“You are not kidnapping me for my own safety.”
His mouth tightened.
“I wouldn’t have to kidnap you if you made better decisions.”
“That sentence is not helping.”
We compromised.
Technically.
Grandma remained in a protected hospital suite.
I moved temporarily into an apartment inside one of Adrien’s secured buildings.
It had cameras, guards, and a refrigerator larger than my old bathroom.
I hated how safe I felt.
The phrase “seven bluebirds” led us to Union Station.
Locker seven in an old luggage storage area had been removed years earlier.
But Adrien found an archived property map.
The original locker bank had been relocated to a transit storage warehouse.
Inside locker seven, behind a rusted panel, we found a blue metal box.
Seven bird stickers covered the lid.
My mother’s handwriting was on the bottom.
LENA, IF YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH TO READ THIS, I’M SORRY.
My hands shook.
The box contained a second tape.
Three photographs.
A tiny notebook.
And a receipt from Saint Agnes Residential Care dated eleven months earlier.
The patient name was listed as:
S. RAY.
My knees weakened.
“This is recent.”
Adrien took the receipt.
“The account paid for sixteen years of residential care.”
“By whom?”
He turned it over.
A number was printed on the back.
His face changed.
“What?”
“I know the account prefix.”
My heart pounded.
“Carlo?”
“Yes.”
Saint Agnes sat eighty miles outside Chicago.
We drove there immediately.
Adrien brought only two guards.
Not Marco.
I noticed.
So did he.
The drive took almost two hours because of construction and rain.
For the first forty minutes, neither of us spoke.
I kept staring at the receipt in my lap.
S. RAY.
Eleven months ago.
A piece of paper could be cruel that way.
It could reduce sixteen years of grief to a billing code and a payment date.
Finally, Adrien said, “Tell me something you remember about her.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
I looked out the window.
“She sang while she cleaned.”
“What did she sing?”
“Old Motown. Badly.”
He nodded as if filing away something precious.
“She made pancakes shaped like animals. None of the animals looked right. She said that was because they were exotic.”
Adrien’s mouth moved.
“What else?”
“She hated thunderstorms.”
“Why?”
“I never knew.”
I traced the edge of the receipt.
“On my eighth birthday, she promised we’d go to Navy Pier. She bought me a yellow sweater because I wanted to look grown-up. Three days later she disappeared.”
Adrien was quiet.
“I hated yellow for years.”
“That makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. It was a sweater.”
“It wasn’t a sweater.”
I looked at him.
He understood too quickly.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you remember from before the kidnapping?”
He stared through the windshield partition.
“My mother’s perfume.”
“That’s it?”
“No. But it’s the first thing.”
He rubbed his thumb across the scar on his wrist.
“Afterward, people kept trying to return me to the boy I had been. Same bedroom. Same school. Same piano teacher. Same Sunday lunches.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“What would have helped?”
His answer came after a long pause.
“Someone admitting that boy was gone.”
I swallowed.
“Did Sofia do that?”
“I think she did.”
He looked at me.
“She never told me to stop being afraid. She asked what made the room feel safer.”
The similarity struck me.
My mother had done the same thing with me during thunderstorms.
Not don’t be afraid.
What would help?
A night-light.
A blanket.
Her hand.
Adrien glanced at the pendant.
“If she is alive, Lena, we will find her.”
I wanted to believe him.
I wanted to trust the certainty in his voice.
But certainty had disappointed me before.
“So did he.
“You don’t trust him now.”
“I trust evidence.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
It wasn’t.
The facility looked peaceful.
Red brick.
Autumn trees.
White curtains.
The administrator became nervous the second Adrien introduced himself.
“We have no patient by that name.”
I placed the receipt on her desk.
Her face drained.
Adrien leaned forward.
“I’m going to ask once.”
She swallowed.
“Room 214.”
I ran.
The room was empty.
The bed had been stripped.
A glass of water still stood on the table.
Warm.
Someone had been there recently.
I opened drawers.
Nothing.
Closet.
Nothing.
Bathroom.
Nothing.
Then I saw scratches behind the dresser.
Adrien helped me move it.
Three words had been carved into the wall.
BLUEBIRD 17 NORTH.
I touched the letters.
“My mother was here.”
Adrien didn’t answer.
I turned.
He was staring at a framed photograph on the floor.
It showed Saint Agnes staff at a holiday party.
A woman stood in the back row.
Older.
Thinner.
But I knew her face.
I knew it from my childhood.
From dreams.
From sixteen years of wondering.
“Mom.”
My voice broke.
Adrien handed me the frame.
Sofia Reyes was alive.
At least she had been six months earlier.
A crash sounded in the hallway.
Adrien moved before I understood.
He pushed me behind him.
The first shot shattered the doorframe.
The guards returned fire.
I dropped behind the bed.
Adrien dragged me toward the bathroom.
“Stay down.”
Another shot.
He flinched.
Blood appeared on his shoulder.
“Adrien!”
“It’s a graze.”
“That is not nothing.”
“Lena.”
He shoved me into the bathroom.
Then stopped.
His breathing changed.
Too fast.
The gunshots.
The locked room.
The sudden violence.
I saw the past taking him.
He gripped the sink.
“Adrien.”
“Don’t.”
I stepped closer.
He shook his head.
“I need to—”
Another shot cracked through the wall.
He went pale.
I reached for his wrist.
His eyes found mine.
“Not eleven,” I whispered.
He breathed.
“Not that room.”
Another breath.
“You’re here.”
His fingers closed around the edge of the sink.
“You’re not alone.”
His pulse slowed beneath my hand.
Then the shooting stopped.
One attacker fled.
The other was arrested by local police.
Adrien refused the hospital until I threatened to call his surgeon myself.
“I have no idea who that is,” he said.
“I’ll find one.”
“You’re terrifying when you’re angry.”
“Good.”
At the emergency department, he let a nurse clean the wound.
He flinched.
But he did not pull away.
He kept his eyes on me.
Later, while the doctor stitched his shoulder, Adrien said, “Your mother used to hum.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“At the clinic. After the kidnapping.”
“You remember her?”
“Pieces.”
“What kind of pieces?”
“Her voice. Her hands. She never grabbed me. She would sit beside the bed and wait until I reached for her.”
My throat tightened.
“That sounds like her.”
“She wore a small silver bird.”
I touched the pendant from the bank box, which now hung around my neck.
His eyes fixed on it.
“That one.”
The room went silent.
“Bluebird,” I whispered.
Adrien nodded.
“I think your mother was the first person I trusted after I was rescued.”
Suddenly his reaction to my touch no longer felt impossible.
Not magic.
Memory.
My face.
My voice.
The way I held his wrist.
Maybe his body had recognized safety before his mind understood why.
The doctor finished the last stitch.
Adrien looked at me.
“Your mother saved me once.”
I shook my head.
“You saved yourself.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“People like to believe survival is an individual act. It rarely is.”
Before I could answer, his phone rang.
Marco.
Adrien put it on speaker.
“Boss, Carlo’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“We don’t know. His house is empty.”
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
Marco continued.
“And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Someone accessed the Varelli Foundation gala security plans.”
Adrien’s eyes met mine.
“The gala is tomorrow night,” he said.
May you like
Marco’s voice lowered.
“And the login belonged to me.”
