Chapter 7 - Seventy-Two Hours
The job offer came from Isabella.
Not Gabriel.
That mattered to Clare.
“Three days,” Isabella said. “Private postpartum care for Leo while my shoulder is useless. Paid through the family office. Written contract. Normal nursing rate plus travel. No favors.”
Clare looked at Gabriel.
He lifted both hands. “I was told not to speak.”
Isabella smiled. “He’s learning.”
Clare read every line of the contract twice.
She signed.
The Salvatore house sat behind iron gates overlooking Biscayne Bay, but the inside surprised her. No gold statues. No dramatic guards at every door. Just pale walls, family photographs, a kitchen that smelled like coffee, and a nursery filled with things bought by people who were terrified of getting grief wrong.
Sofia was everywhere.
A framed wedding photograph.
A scarf over the back of a chair.
A handwritten note taped inside the nursery cabinet: EXTRA PACIFIERS IN TOP DRAWER. GABRIEL WILL NEVER FIND THEM.
Clare saw Gabriel stop when he noticed her reading it.
“She wrote that two days before Leo was born,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
That night Leo refused his bottle again.
Clare did not offer herself as the solution.
She dimmed the lights, warmed the nipple, changed his position, and had Gabriel hold a soft cotton scarf that still carried a trace of Sofia’s perfume from a sealed memory box.
Leo drank two ounces.
Gabriel’s eyes filled.
“You didn’t need to be the answer,” he said.
“No.” Clare adjusted Leo’s blanket. “A good nurse shouldn’t need to be.”
For the first time, Gabriel smiled fully.
Downstairs, Vincent spread printouts across the dining table.
The fake text screenshots had metadata inconsistencies. The font spacing did not match Clare’s old phone. One message timestamp fell after the device had been destroyed.
But Elena needed more than suspicion.
“We need the original backup,” she said.
Clare shook her head. “Richard controlled the family cloud account.”
“Password?”
“Changed the night I left.”
Maya wandered in carrying Bunny, now stitched across the paw with blue thread.
Vincent’s phone chirped.
He checked the security dashboard.
Then he frowned.
“What is it?” Gabriel asked.
Vincent turned the screen around.
A location signal had just appeared inside the house.
Same device family as the tracker removed from Bunny.
May you like
Different serial number.
And it was moving from the guest wing toward the nursery.
