Chapter 10

Revealed Double Life.

The child Violet, who was pretending to sleep in her adjacent room, was intrigued by the unusually lateness of her father's activities and was drawn to it when a sliver of yellow and sharp light escaped from beneath it.

 Attracted by a gut feeling that, even at that time, hinted at secret realities and worlds. 

Her bare feet were silent on the smooth marble floor as she crept to the door, pressing her tiny ear to the cool wood and trying to make out the muffled voices inside.

 The rustle of papers or the occasional sharp intake of breath broke the low, conspiratorial cadence of the conversation. 

A world away from the loud laughter and cosy family warmth that typically occupied these spaces, it was a language of shadows.

 Peeking through the keyhole, her heart pounding with both fascination and fear, she had seen what would later become a terrifying scene.

 Under the dim light of a single desk lamp, her father—the man she knew as a devoted guardian and a storyteller of fantastical tales—stood with a seriousness on his face that she hardly ever saw. 

The rich Persian rug had long, warped shadows from the two men he was meeting with. 

The first man was stern, his posture stiff, his dark suit perfectly fitted.

 He exuded a sense of authority that even Violet, in her naivete, acknowledged as Don Romano's. 

His voice was low, but it had a gravelly resonance Violet had heard a lot in the rare, tense family meetings. 

He used sharp hand gestures to punctuate his words, which were delivered in a clipped, demanding tone.

 In sharp contrast, the second man's movements were quiet and fluid, and his darker clothing nearly blended into the room's shadows. There was a stillness about him that suggested a coiled danger, a colder, more predatory air. 

There was a keen, almost ruthless intelligence in the angles of his face, which was half hidden by the gloom. 

When he spoke, his voice was a low, sibilant murmur, and every word seemed to have a secret meaning. 

Young Violet was particularly affected by the slight yet noticeable change in her father's manner as he spoke to each man.

 Violet sensed a tightly controlled tension beneath Don Romano's tone of measured respect and careful deference.

 However, her father's cadence and inflections changed when he was around the second man, the one who moved like a shadow.

 He started using more elliptical, coded language that was full of hidden meanings and veiled allusions. 

Within the boundaries of his own study, he seemed to be speaking two different languages and living in two different worlds. 

The realization, even in her young mind, was unsettling.

 It hinted at conflicting loyalties, at a deeper game being played beneath the surface of their seemingly normal family life.

 She felt a knot in her stomach, a hunch that the man she knew as her father might be more nuanced and enigmatic than she had ever thought.

 As the meeting with the second man drew to a close, Violet watched as her father moved to a heavy, intricately carved wooden desk.

 With a practiced ease that suggested it was a familiar ritual, he pressed a seemingly innocuous carving on its side.

 A tiny, leather-bound ledger was revealed when a concealed compartment suddenly opened with a gentle click that reverberated through the silence.

 As he slipped the ledger into the compartment, her father's fingers—which were normally so soft when he held her hand—became quick and sly.

 His eyes lingered on the cover before he closed it, and in the dim lamplight, Violet noticed a single, stylised burning feather that was embossed in gold as a symbol.

 The forbidden memento she now held in her own hand was the same mysterious symbol that adorned the face of his beloved watch.

 She felt a chill of unease at the connection, as if the secrets in that ledger and the watch were much more important and dangerous than she could ever fathom.

 The image of her father's double life and the burning feather symbol were still etched in her memory's permanent ink, even though the study's door was still closed and its secrets were locked away.