Chapter 2
“Meet me in my office in ten minutes.”
Daniel’s voice was low, only for me, before he turned and walked back to his seat, Ethan clinging to his hand like a lifeline.
I didn’t move until they were gone, until the room erupted into whispers so loud they buzzed in my ears.
I stumbled to the staff bathroom, locking the door behind me, and slid down to the cold tile.
My wrist was already bruising, purple and black blooming across the skin.
I stared at the envelope in my lap.
The paper was thick, expensive, the kind you only see in movies.
My hands shook so bad I almost tore it opening the flap.
Inside was a contract.
Ten pages, neat legal text, but the first line made my breath catch.
$50,000 a month.
For six months.
My job: be Ethan’s full-time companion. Live in the mansion. Eat with him. Play with him. Tuck him in at night. Be the person he ran to when he was scared.
No romantic obligations.
No requirements to dress up or impress anyone.
Just be there for him.
And if I completed the six months?
A $200,000 bonus.
I read that number three times, then four, pressing my fingers to the paper like it might disappear.
It was enough.
Enough to pay off every last one of Mom’s medical bills. Enough for the kidney transplant she’d been waiting two years for. Enough to get us out of that roach-infested apartment, enough to never have to choose between groceries and prescriptions ever again.
A sharp knock on the door made me jump.
“Open up.”
Evelyn.
I stuffed the contract back in the envelope and unlocked the door, my heart hammering against my ribs.
She stood there, lipstick smudged, eyes blazing with a hatred so hot it almost burned me.
“You think you’ve won, don’t you?” she said, stepping close enough that I could smell her expensive perfume, sharp and suffocating. “You think that little boy’s tantrum means you’re one of us?”
I said nothing.
Just stared at my scuffed shoes.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” she said, her voice dropping to a hiss. “You are a maid. You will always be a maid. I will make every single day you live in that house a living hell. You will quit within a month. And when you do? I’ll make sure you never work in this city again.”
She turned on her heel and walked away, her gown swishing behind her.
I leaned against the doorframe, my legs weak.
Part of me wanted to run.
To take the bus home, forget this ever happened, go back to scrubbing floors and waiting tables and praying Mom didn’t get worse.
But then I thought of Ethan’s face.
Serious.
Sure.
Like he’d known me his whole life.
I thought of Mom, gasping for air in that hospital bed, telling me not to worry about her, that I deserved to be happy.
I wiped my cheeks, squared my shoulders, and walked to Daniel’s office.
He was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk, Ethan curled up in the chair next to him, coloring on a stack of legal papers.
“Read it?” Daniel asked, not looking up.
I nodded.
“Understand it?”
Another nod.
“Questions?”
I took a breath.
“Why me?”
He finally looked up, his dark eyes meeting mine.
“Ethan hasn’t smiled like that since his mother died,” he said, quiet, like he was admitting something he’d never told anyone. “He hasn’t spoken more than three words at a time to anyone in three years. Whatever you have… he needs it. That’s all that matters.”
Ethan looked up, grinning, crayon in hand.
“Can she come live with us now, Daddy? Please?”
Daniel looked at me.
I thought of Evelyn’s threats.
Thought of the money.
Thought of Mom’s surgery.
Thought of the little boy who’d seen me crying when no one else would even look at me.
May you like
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ll do it.”
