Chapter 1

At my nanny interview for the nation's most secretive billionaire, I caught his daughter -- who hadn't spoken in fourteen months -- holding my waist in a death grip and crying.

"Mommy."

The two words were sharp, cracked, and completely certain, instantly shattering the dead silence of the Haynes estate.

Every maid and bodyguard in the hall froze on the spot.

A chill went down my spine because I swore I had never seen this child before in my life.

But in a scene that should have been chaotic and embarrassing, I didn't cry, and I didn't panic. "Sweetheart," I said. "I think--"

"Don't."

Silas Haynes came down the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail. Black suit, no tie, a face that had decided long ago to stop giving anything away for free.

He was looking at his daughter's arms around a stranger like a man watching a door open in a wall he'd had bricked over.

"Mr. Haynes, she's confused. I've never met her. I don't want you thinking I--"

"Fourteen months." He said it to no one. "A hundred and nine specialists."

He crossed the last three steps. Up close his eyes weren't calm at all -- they were doing arithmetic very fast and hating every number.

"You'll stay."

I actually laughed. It came out wrong. "Stay?"

"One month. Twelve becomes forty." No blink. "Do not correct her."

"You want me to let a six-year-old call me her dead mother?"

"I want her to keep talking." Something moved in his jaw. "If the word works, the word stays."

Daisy Haynes hadn't let go. Her fists had my sweater knotted like she'd fall off the earth if she opened her hands.

"Mr. Haynes. Children don't pick a face out of a room. She thinks she knows me."

And for one second -- one -- something crossed his face that wasn't surprise.

He turned away before I could name it.

I took the job. It wasn't just for my sister's surgery fee. It was for that strange word, "Mommy," and the security camera I noticed on my way upstairs -- the one turned exactly nine degrees, staring down at me like a cold eye.