Chapter 5 - The Eighteenth Nanny’s WarningClara did not sleep that night.
Not because the mansion lacked beds. The room assigned to her was larger than the entire apartment she shared with her mother and brother. It had cream walls, a private bathroom, folded towels softer than any clothing she owned, and a window overlooking gardens clipped into perfect shapes.
But the door had a lock.
She left it open.
Across the hall, Noah slept in the family room with two guards stationed outside and Dominic seated in a chair near the fireplace, still wearing his suit, still awake at three in the morning.
The feared man did not look feared then.
He looked like a father afraid to blink.
At 3:17 a.m., Clara heard a soft tap at the service entrance.
She froze.
Another tap.
Not loud enough to wake the guards near Noah.
Clara took the heavy brass candlestick from the hallway table and moved toward the sound. She knew it was foolish. Girls like her survived by not investigating noises in rich men’s houses. But Mrs. Hargrove had known Tyler’s surgery date. That meant the danger was already outside every door Clara cared about.
She opened the service entrance two inches.
A woman stood in the shadows.
Her forehead was bandaged. Her left sleeve was torn. Dried blood marked the collar of her nanny uniform.
The eighteenth nanny.
“Please,” the woman whispered. “I don’t have much time.”
Clara opened the door wider.
The woman slipped inside, trembling violently.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Clara said.
“I know.” She looked over her shoulder. “They told me to leave town. They put cash in my purse and a man followed my cab all the way to the train station.”
“Who?”
The woman swallowed. “Hargrove.”
Clara’s grip tightened around the candlestick.
The nanny looked down the hallway. “Is he sleeping? The boy?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I said terrible things about him.”
“You were hurt.”
“He didn’t mean to hurt me.” Her voice broke. “I know that now.”
Clara led her into the laundry room and closed the door.
“What happened today?” Clara asked.
The woman pressed both hands to her mouth for a moment, trying to steady herself.
“My name is Anna Lorne. I was hired three days ago. Mrs. Hargrove told me Noah had violent episodes, that I must never let him near the north wing. She said if he ran that way, I was to restrain him, no matter what.”
Clara felt cold spread through her.
“He tried to go there?”
Anna nodded. “This morning. He kept pointing. He wasn’t screaming at first. He was crying, pulling my sleeve, trying to drag me down the hall.”
“What did you do?”
“I followed him.”
The laundry machines hummed softly around them.
Anna’s voice dropped.
“There’s a red door at the end of the north wing. Not the first locked door. Not the second. The last one, behind a false bookcase.”
Clara’s breath caught.
“Noah knew how to open it?” she asked.
“He knew where it was. He pressed his hand to the shelf, but Mrs. Hargrove came before anything opened.”
Anna touched the bandage on her head.
“She told me I had endangered him. She ordered me to carry him away. I tried. That was when he lost control. He grabbed a picture frame and threw it. I fell against the table.”
Clara remembered the blood.
“I ran because I was scared,” Anna whispered. “But in the car, I found something in my pocket.”
She pulled out a folded scrap of paper.
Clara took it.
The handwriting was uneven, jagged, barely legible.
N O M E D
Clara frowned. “No med.”
Anna nodded. “He must have put it there when I was carrying him.”
No medicine.
Clara thought of the white pill in the crystal dish. Noah’s terror. Dr. Keller’s ignorance. Hargrove’s calm face.
Anna wiped her cheeks. “There’s more.”
She reached into her coat and pulled out a small plastic keycard.
“I stole it from Mrs. Hargrove’s desk before I left.”
Clara stared at it.
Anna’s voice trembled. “I don’t know what it opens, but she kept it in an envelope labeled E.V.”
Elena Vale.
The laundry room door opened.
Both women jumped.
Dominic stood there.
He had moved so silently neither heard him.
Anna went white. “Mr. Vale—”
“Who followed your cab?” he asked.
Anna blinked.
“The man,” Dominic said. “Describe him.”
“Tall. Scar on his chin. Gray coat.”
Dominic’s expression darkened. “Victor Cross.”
Clara remembered hearing that name whispered by guards earlier in the evening. Dominic’s head of external security. One of the few men with access to every gate, every camera, every vehicle.
Dominic held out his hand. “The keycard.”
Anna gave it to him.
He looked at the initials.
For a moment, grief moved across his face so openly Clara had to look away.
Then he closed his fist around the card.
“Anna,” he said, “you will not go to the police.”
Her face crumpled.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” Dominic said. “That is why you will stay alive.”
She stared at him.
“I have police on my payroll,” he continued. “So do the people who did this. Until I know which badge is clean, you speak only to me.”
Anna nodded shakily.
Dominic looked at Clara. “Take her to the pantry behind the wine cellar. Marco will hide her there.”
Clara hesitated. “You trust Marco?”
“With my life.”
“With Noah’s?”
Dominic’s eyes met hers.
The question hurt him.
But he answered.
“Now I do.”
A sound came from the hallway.
A child’s cry.
Clara ran.
Noah stood barefoot outside the family room, blanket dragging behind him, eyes fixed on the keycard in Dominic’s hand.
His face twisted with terror and hope.
Dominic crouched slowly.
“Noah,” he whispered, “does this open Mama’s door?”
The boy’s whole body shook.
He looked at Clara.
Then at Dominic.
Then toward the north wing.
This time the word came out clearer.
“Yes.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
Anna sobbed behind them.
Clara knelt beside Noah, heart pounding.
May you like
The mansion was no longer hiding a secret.
It was guarding a prisoner.
