The seventh governess quit before dessert.
She did not make a scene. Women hired by the Moretti household were trained, polished, and expensive enough to understand that panic looked vulgar in silk. Miss Rosalind Wren merely rose from the dining table with her napkin clenched in one shaking hand, bowed stiffly toward Dante Moretti, and said, “I’m afraid I am not the right fit for your family.”
A porcelain bowl lay shattered near her feet. Cream soup had splashed across the antique rug like pale paint. One crystal glass had rolled under the sideboard. A silver fork sat bent beside little Stella Moretti’s chair, though no one had seen the child bend it.
Dante did not move.
At the head of the long mahogany table, beneath a chandelier bright enough to make every lie look elegant, he looked more like a judge than a father. His black suit was perfect. His dark hair was brushed back. His hands rested on either side of his untouched plate.
Across from him sat his three children.
Matteo, the oldest by four minutes, had eyes too serious for a seven-year-old. He stared at Miss Wren as if he were memorizing another betrayal.
Nico, small and narrow-shouldered, kept his gaze on his lap. His lower lip trembled, but he would rather have bitten through it than cry in that room.
Stella, with her dark curls pinned too tightly away from her face, had gone silent in the frightening way only children can—silent not because they do not feel, but because they have learned no one comes when they do.
Dante looked at the ruined table. Then at Miss Wren.
“You were recommended by the Van Asten family,” he said.
Miss Wren’s face went pale. “Yes, sir.”
“They said you handled difficult children.”
The word difficult moved across the table like a knife being passed from hand to hand.
Matteo’s shoulders rose.
Nico shut his eyes.
Stella’s fingers curled around the edge of her chair.
From the service doorway, Lila Moreno saw all of it.
She should not have been there. Laundry girls were not supposed to hover near the private dining room, especially not during family dinner. But the upstairs housekeeper had sent her with fresh napkins after Stella had overturned the first basket. Lila had arrived just in time to see Miss Wren reach toward the empty chair beside Dante and say, in a cheerful voice, “Perhaps we should remove this extra setting. Empty places make children dwell on unpleasant things.”
Then the war had started.
Stella had screamed.
Nico had knocked over the soup.
Matteo had thrown a glass—not at Miss Wren, never quite at her, but near enough to make her understand that the Moretti triplets could calculate distance better than most grown men.
And now the seventh governess was leaving, just like the six before her.
Dante lifted one hand.
A guard near the wall stepped forward and escorted Miss Wren out. The woman did not even ask for her coat.
The dining room fell into a silence so heavy Lila could hear rain tapping against the tall black windows.
Beside Dante’s right shoulder stood Selene Harrow, the woman who had run the Moretti estate since Dante’s wife disappeared three years earlier. Selene was beautiful in a cold, marble sort of way, with silver-blond hair twisted at her neck and a black dress that made grief look fashionable. She placed a hand on Dante’s chair.
“You see?” she said softly. “This is exactly why the children need structure. A firmer arrangement. A permanent decision.”
Dante did not answer.
Dr. Rowan Voss, the family physician, stood near the sideboard with his leather medical case open. He had been summoned after Nico refused breakfast that morning and Stella cried in her sleep again. He held a small brown bottle between two fingers and spoke with the patience of a man used to being obeyed.
“The evening dose may settle them,” he said. “Their nervous systems are overstimulated. Predictable routines are essential.”
Lila watched him tilt the bottle over three small cups of orange cordial.
One drop. Two.
He wiped the rim of the bottle with his thumb and slid the cups closer to the children’s plates.
No one noticed Lila in the doorway.
That was the gift and curse of being the laundry room girl. She was nineteen, old enough to know when adults were lying and young enough that rich people still mistook her for furniture. She carried linens. She mended cuffs. She returned shirts to closets larger than the apartment she shared with her mother. People spoke around her because they assumed silence meant stupidity.
But Lila had learned the mansion by listening.
She knew which guards hated each other.
She knew which cook watered down the expensive wine after midnight.
She knew Dr. Voss always came on Tuesdays and Thursdays, except this week he had come three evenings in a row.
She knew Selene Harrow had been smiling more since Dante’s lawyer began visiting.