Chapter 7 - The Sweetest SleepTwo weeks later.
The estate was quiet, but it was a warm, living quiet—the kind filled with the distant sound of a little girl laughing in the garden rather than the sterile hum of a fortress under siege.
Julian had fled to the Cayman Islands with whatever scraps of cash he could smuggle out before I froze his assets, and Dante was living out his days in quiet isolation in the east wing. The syndicate had rallied behind my leadership, recognizing that the era of paranoia and poison was over, replaced by ironclad loyalty and absolute transparency.
It was 11:45 PM on a Saturday night.
I sat in my master bedroom, wearing comfortable sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, reading a complex shipping acquisition contract on my tablet.
A soft, familiar patter of bare feet echoed against the hallway floor.
The master bedroom door swung open.
Standing in the threshold, wearing her bright yellow lion pajamas and holding her battered, earless rabbit, was Lily Carter.
I lowered my tablet, a genuine, warm smile breaking across my face.
“Let me guess,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Mama’s sleeping, and you decided it was time for a bedtime story?”
Lily nodded solemnly, crawling across the bed and settling comfortably against my side, pulling a brand-new, colorful storybook from behind her back.
“Are you having trouble sleeping, Mr. Moretti?” she asked, looking up with her big, dark eyes.
I set the tablet on the nightstand, turned off the harsh overhead lamp, and leaned back against the plush pillows, pulling the duvet up over us both.
“No, Lily,” I whispered, wrapping a arm around her small shoulders, feeling the deep, natural exhaustion finally settling into my bones without a single chemical, without a single paranoid thought, and without a single shadow in the hallway. “For the first time in three years, I’m sleeping like a baby.”
May you like
She opened the book, her little voice beginning to read the wandering, mispronounced words of her favorite story.
And as the cadence of her voice washed over me, I closed my eyes, drifting effortlessly into the sweetest, deepest sleep of my life.
