An hour later, Matteo arrived at the Hilton hotel.
Even though he was smart for his age, he was still a kid, so it took some time for him to arrive at his destination. Thankfully, he quickly spotted a car in the hotel parking lot that was the same one the men in black had driven when they took his mother away from the hospital. His heart skipping a beat in excitement, he made his way to the hotel lobby.
“Hi, pretty lady! I’d like to ask who that car outside belongs to?” The receptionist, a young woman, lowered her head to see an adorable five-year-old boy standing on his tiptoes and peeking over the counter.
With a fluffy head of dark hair and large, curious eyes, he looked like a handsome young protagonist from a Disney animation. Isn’t… Isn’t this Ian, the young boy who lives in our hotel’s penthouse suite? She stammered, “Mr. I-Ian? Why are… you here? Weren’t you just at the restaurant?”
Huh? Mr. Ian? Matteo quickly picked up that something was off. So, he pulled a tall stool over and climbed onto it, resting his elbows on the reception counter as he smiled brightly at the young woman whose cheeks went red. “That’s right! I just came out for a minute. Oh, do you know who the car outside belongs to, miss?
” “Doesn’t it belong to your family? Your father’s staff was driving it when he came home just now,” she replied, confused. Matteo beamed; his chubby cheeks becoming round. “Okay! Thank you, pretty lady. I’ll be going now!” “Where are you going? It’s too dangerous for you to be alone. Let me walk you back to the restaurant, or your father is going to panic if he can’t find you.”
The receptionist scrambled out of her seat, worried that the boy might get lost if he left the hotel premises. But Matteo wasn’t about to let that happen. She had recognized him as “Mr. Ian”, and he wanted to see for himself what the real Mr. Ian looked like. During class yesterday, his teacher had shown them a photo of a kid who was transferring to their preschool.
The kid in the photo looked like Matteo, but his name was “Ian.” When he got home and hacked into the preschool principal’s computer to search for more information about Ian, the registered address was the penthouse suite of the very Hilton hotel that Matteo was currently at.
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: The Love that Never Really Dies