Chapter 5
Morning light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The dining room smelled of frying bacon and truffle.
Alaric sat at the head of the table, flipping through a set of blueprints.
They were the renovation plans for the Ravenel Group's new flagship hotel.
Which is to say, my life's work.
Delphine sat beside him in a silk robe, a bone-china coffee cup in her hand, fingertips lacquered blood-red.
"Darling, I think this skylight over the atrium is much too conservative," Delphine cooed, dragging a nail across the drawing. "Take out these two support columns and go all-glass. It'll feel so much more modern."
Alaric frowned, thinking it over.
"But when Sabine designed it, she said these two columns were the core load-bearing points…"
At the sound of my name, Delphine's face dropped in an instant.
"She's dead, Alaric."
"Are we going to live in that dead woman's shadow forever?"
Alaric fell silent, a weak, yielding look flickering in his eyes.
I stood off to the side, holding the strawberry smoothie I'd made for Posy.
Watching them trample over everything I'd built.
"Sir. Ma'am."
I walked forward calmly and set the smoothie on the table.
Delphine arched a brow at me, that habitual arrogance and challenge in her eyes.
"Nanny, no one asked for your opinion."
I didn't back down. I let my gaze drift across the blueprint, as if by accident.
"I'm sorry. It's just — while I was looking after Miss Posy, she mentioned the structure of this house."
I reached out and pointed to an intersection on the drawing.
"If you remove these two load-bearing columns, the steel frame of the skylight will shift as a whole under any lateral wind load above force eight."
"The entire glass canopy will shatter in three seconds."
The dining room went silent.
Alaric's head snapped up. He stared at me, hard.
In that moment his eyes were full of shock — and something far more complicated. A wary alarm.
Because that precise engineering figure was something only he and I had ever discussed.
Delphine's coffee cup came down on its saucer with a jarring crack.
"How would you know something like that?"
She stood, bearing down on me, the suspicion in her eyes almost solid.
"I read a case study like it in an architecture magazine once," I said, dipping my head, voice respectful and dull. "I only mentioned it for Miss Posy's safety."
Alaric studied the blueprint carefully. His face had gone a little pale.
"She's right," he said hoarsely. "The numbers match exactly."
Delphine shot me a vicious look. The humiliation of being schooled on her own turf by a nanny twisted her lovely face.
"Out."
She ground the word out between her teeth.
I withdrew from the dining room.
Behind me, the first round of the game was mine.
But a deeper danger was waiting for me in the nursery.
That afternoon, when I walked in, the whole atmosphere had changed.
Torn drawing paper littered the floor.
Posy was pressed into the corner of her bed, both hands clamped over her ears, sobbing helplessly on the ground.
Delphine stood in the center of the room, a crumpled drawing crushed in her fist.
Her face was bloodless, her breathing heavy, her eyes full of a murderous intent she wasn't bothering to hide.
"What is this you drew?"
Delphine shrieked, and yanked Posy roughly off the bed.
Posy hit the floor, her knee blooming with bruises.
"Answer me! What is this black stuff on the hands?!"
I rushed over, shoved Delphine back, and pulled Posy behind me.
"Ma'am. She's just a child."
Delphine flung the drawing in my face.
The paper slid down my cheek.
It was a crayon drawing of a family of three.
Daddy, Mommy, and Posy.
But the figure standing in for the "new mommy," Delphine, had been scribbled over head to toe in black crayon.
Especially the hands.
Drawn huge, smeared with something black and liquid.
Posy huddled against me, sobbing, her whole body shaking as she cried out:
"That night… I saw you…"
"You were in the garage… your hands had black oil on them…"
"You broke Mommy's car!"
The words cracked through the narrow nursery like a thunderclap.
A six-year-old had finally spoken the secret she'd kept buried for eight months.
In that instant, everything in Delphine's expression changed.
The rage was gone. What was left was pure, predatory cold.
She stared at Posy.
Like she was looking at a threat that had to be removed. Immediately.
"You saw."
Delphine repeated it softly, the corner of her mouth curling into an eerie little arc.
She didn't shout again.
She simply looked down at me and Posy, the temperature in her eyes dropping to zero.
Then, slowly, she turned and walked toward the door.
Just as she crossed the threshold.
She turned her head, and looked at Posy. A long, deep look.
There was nothing human in it.
The door.
It closed, heavy.
The sound of the bolt sliding home came clearly from the other side.
I held my trembling daughter, and cold sweat broke out across my back.
Delphine had made up her mind to kill.
She knew now: Posy was the only witness to that night.
The time we had left.
It was running out.