“A room full of wealthy adults panicked over a screaming baby, but a twenty-three-year-old waitress was the only one who realized he was begging for help.

The office air felt suddenly thin, as if someone had turned off the ventilation.

“How did you get that?” Sophie asked, her voice dropping an octave as her fingers tightened around the edge of the manager’s desk.

“When people like me need to know who is touching their children, we don’t wait for references,” Dominic replied, his voice remaining terrifyingly level.

“That record is sealed,” she whispered, a knot of pure panic tightening in her stomach.

“Nothing is sealed from someone who knows the right judge, Sophie,” Dominic said, closing her file with a crisp, final snap. “St. Jude’s claimed you gave an incorrect dosage of sedation to an infant in ward four. They said it was gross negligence.”

Sophie felt the blood drain entirely from her face, the bright lights of the office blurring into a nauseating haze. “It wasn’t. I caught a mislabeled batch from the pharmacy before it could do permanent damage, but the attending physician blamed me to cover his own license. They suspended me while they ‘investigated,’ but they buried the truth so deep it might as well be carved in stone.”

“And while you wait for a review board that has no intention of clearing you, you serve overpriced cocktails to businessmen in a jazz bar,” Dominic noted, leaning back in his chair and watching her with calculating gray eyes. “How is that working out for your rent?”

“It’s none of your business,” she snapped, though her voice shook.

“It becomes my business when my son’s health is at stake,” Dominic countered, standing up with a quiet, dominant grace that made the massive guard by the door shift attentively. “He needs twenty-four-hour care from someone who actually understands overstimulation, not from terrified nannies or rotating agency nurses who panic the second he cries.”

“I am not looking for a live-in position,” Sophie said, stepping back toward the door. “Especially not with you.”

“I’m not offering you a position, Sophie. I’m offering you a trade,” Dominic said, stopping her in her tracks. “You move into the Obsidian estate, you take care of Leo during his waking and sleeping hours, and in exchange, I use my legal team to tear St. Jude’s investigation apart. By the end of the month, your nursing license will be fully restored, clean, and framed on your wall.”

Sophie stared at him, her chest heaving as she processed the impossible weight of the offer. “You can do that?”

“I own half the healthcare boards in this state,” Dominic said flatly. “For me, it’s a phone call. For you, it’s your entire future.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You go back to carrying trays, wondering every month if your landlord is going to lock you out, while your license rots in a bureaucratic drawer,” Dominic said, walking slowly around the desk until he was standing just feet away from her. “Think about it carefully, Sophie. You calmed a child in sixty seconds that half a dozen specialists couldn’t quiet in six months. You belong in a ward, not a restaurant.”

The Obsidian estate did not look like a home; it looked like a fortress that had been dressed up as a mansion to fool the neighbors.

It sat on the jagged cliffs north of the city, surrounded by towering iron gates, black stone walls, and a perimeter patrolled by men who didn’t smile.

When Dominic’s town car dropped her off on her first night, the wind off the lake carried a sharp, metallic bite that cut straight through her jacket.

The front doors swung open before she even touched the handle, revealing Martha, who looked at Sophie with a complicated mix of relief and dread.

“Welcome to the Obsidian, dear,” Martha murmured, taking her small duffel bag. “Mr. Russo has already gone to his study. I’ll show you to the nursery.”

The interior was a labyrinth of dark mahogany wood, heavy velvet drapes, and low amber lighting that cast long, skeletal shadows across the halls.

It was quiet—the heavy, suffocating silence of a place where nobody laughed out loud.

As they climbed the sweeping grand staircase, Sophie noticed the portraits lining the walls: stern-faced ancestors, cold landscapes, and finally, halfway down the east wing, a covered frame wrapped in black cloth.

“What is that?” Sophie asked, pausing.

Martha’s face tightened. “Don’t look at it, dear. Mr. Russo doesn’t like anyone lingering in this corridor.”

“Whose portrait is it?”

“The late Mrs. Russo,” Martha whispered, her eyes darting nervously down the hall. “She passed away in this house six months ago, right after Leo was born. Let’s keep moving. The nursery is at the end of the hall.”