Chapter 2 - The Nanny Elias Couldn’t Read
Saraphina spent the next four hours answering questions.
Not the same question repeatedly.
That would have been easier.
Elias jumped between subjects so abruptly that she eventually understood what he was doing.
He was searching for contradictions.
“What color was the south-parlor sensor?”
“Gray.”
“Who installed it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which maid triggered it?”
“Mrs. Alvarez.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“What day?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was she carrying?”
Saraphina blinked.
“Tea.”
“Where were you?”
“Reading to Leo.”
“What book?”
“The one about the blue whale.”
“Where was Leo sitting?”
“On the green sofa.”
“What was the weather?”
She stared at him.
“You cannot possibly think that matters.”
“Answer.”
“Rainy.”
Elias studied her.
Every detail matched information his security team could verify.
That bothered him.
A trained operative sometimes memorized cover stories.
But Saraphina remembered details no intelligence officer would bother constructing.
A maid opening a door with her hip.
A child leaving one sock behind a curtain.
The smell of polish after the floors were waxed.
Which guard always bought orange soda from the machine near the garage.
She did not observe systems.
She observed people.
“You notice everything,” Elias said.
Saraphina rubbed her tired eyes.
“I take care of a four-year-old boy who believes stairs are invitations to jump and electrical outlets exist for scientific research. Of course I notice everything.”
That almost made Elias smile.
Almost.
Instead, he pushed a glass of water toward her.
“Drink.”
She looked suspiciously at it.
“It’s water.”
“So you say.”
His eyebrow moved.
Saraphina picked up the glass.
“You kidnapped me into an interrogation room. Forgive me if trust is developing slowly.”
That word bothered him.
Kidnapped.
Technically accurate.
Elias disliked accurate words when they made him sound like the men he hated.
“You’re being held temporarily.”
“Against my will.”
“Yes.”
“That’s kidnapping.”
His jaw tightened.
Saraphina drank.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then Elias asked something completely different.
“Did you have an accident when you were young?”
Saraphina frowned.
“What?”
“Before you were ten.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I was little.”
“Any hospital stays?”
“My mother says I had a bad fever.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Elias opened another page.
Saraphina noticed something in his expression.
For the first time, this question did not feel like interrogation.
It felt personal.
“Why?”
“Answer me first.”
“I did.”
“Any memories you cannot explain?”
A strange chill moved along her shoulders.
Saraphina looked away.
Everyone had dreams.
Everyone had fragments from childhood that made no sense.
Hers were simply stranger than most.
“I sometimes dream about metal.”
Elias’s fingers stopped moving.
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“A car?”
“Maybe.”
She closed her eyes.
The dream was difficult to describe because it never remained intact once she woke.
“Something cold. A loud noise. Smoke, maybe.”
“And?”
“A woman screaming.”
Elias’s face changed.
Saraphina opened her eyes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s something.”
He ignored her.
“Do you recognize the woman?”
“No.”
“Does she say anything?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Think.”
Saraphina’s irritation rose.
“I’ve been thinking about that dream for twenty years.”
The room went silent.
Twenty years.
Elias looked at her age in the file.
Then at her face.
A memory stirred.
Rain.
Twisted metal.
A little girl crying.
Someone telling him to run.
He pushed it down immediately.
Coincidence.
It had to be.
“Turn around.”
Saraphina stiffened.
“No.”
Elias realized how the command sounded.
“Do you have scars?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“That is an extremely strange question.”
“On your shoulders. Back. Anything from childhood.”
Saraphina crossed her arms.
“I have one.”
His breathing changed.
“Where?”
“My back.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Long.”
“How did you get it?”
“My mother never told me clearly.”
Elias stood so quickly the chair scraped the floor.
Saraphina flinched.
He immediately stepped back.
“Show me.”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Whatever power Elias possessed in this room, that boundary remained hers.
Something about her refusal forced him back into himself.
He turned toward the door.
“Stay here.”
“As though I have another option.”
He left.
Saraphina stared after him.
Outside, Elias walked quickly through the corridor.
His lieutenant, Matteo, followed.
“What happened?”
Elias did not answer until they reached a locked office.
Then he entered a security code.
Opened a safe.
Removed an old envelope.
Matteo had worked for Elias for eleven years.
He had never seen that envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
Water damaged.
Burned along one side.
Three children stood beside a woman near a lake.
One was Elias at approximately nine years old.
Beside him stood his older brother, Julian.
And between them was a little girl.
Dark skin.
Braided hair.
Huge hazel eyes.
The photograph was faded, but the resemblance was unmistakable enough that Matteo’s face changed.
“Who is she?”
Elias turned the picture over.
One name had been written on the back.
Serena.
Matteo looked at him.
“That nanny—”
“No.”
“You see it.”
“I said no.”
“Elias.”
“She died.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw the car.”
His voice cracked slightly.
Matteo went silent.
Elias stared at the photograph.
Twenty-one years earlier, a car had gone through a guardrail during a storm.
His mother had died.
His brother Julian had vanished.
The little girl who had been with them had also been declared dead.
But no body belonging to the girl had ever been recovered.
Only blood.
Clothing.
And one piece of braided ribbon.
Elias had spent years believing he had watched three lives disappear that night.
Now a nanny from Jamaica had appeared inside a Monaco estate.
She had the same eyes.
Unexplained memories.
And perhaps—
the same scar.
Back in the interrogation room, Saraphina stood and stretched.
Her dress shifted slightly at the shoulder.
When Elias returned, he saw it.
Only two inches.
A pale line disappearing beneath the fabric.
But two inches were enough.
The photograph slipped from his fingers.
Saraphina turned.
“What is that?”
Elias stared at her.
For the first time since she had met him, the powerful man looked afraid.
Not angry.
Not suspicious.
Afraid.
“Where,” he whispered, “did you get that scar?”
Saraphina instinctively reached behind herself.
“I told you. I don’t know.”
Elias picked up the photograph.
His hands were trembling.
Then he turned it toward her.
Saraphina looked down.
And the glass slipped from her fingers.
Because the little girl standing beside nine-year-old Elias—
looked exactly like her.
May you like
And beneath the photograph, written in handwriting Saraphina somehow recognized, were four words that made her knees weaken: “Keep Serena safe. Always.”
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