Chapter 3: What the Nanny Remembered
Lily had never spoken directly to Victor Blackwood before.
In six months inside the Blackwood mansion, she had learned his schedule by the sound of his car, his mood by the way his staff moved when he entered a room.
She had kept her head down.
Done her job.
Loved Ethan quietly, the way good nannies do — without asking for credit, without expecting anything back.
She had never imagined sitting on the marble floor of his foyer with his son against her chest, looking up into the face of the most dangerous man in Chicago, and being asked to speak.
"From the beginning," he said again.
Not loud.
Not a threat.
Just a door held open.
Lily swallowed.
"It started three weeks ago," she said.
"The first time you were away overnight."
Serena made a sound — something between a laugh and a warning.
"Victor, you cannot seriously be—"
"Serena." He didn't look at her.
"Sit down or leave the room."
A long pause.
The sound of heels on marble.
Serena moved to the far end of the foyer and stayed standing, arms folded, watching.
Lily kept her eyes on Victor.
"She would come in after I put Ethan down for the night," Lily said.
"At first I thought she was just checking on him.
But she would stand over his crib and — she wouldn't touch him.
She would just look at him.
Like he was something in her way."
Victor said nothing.
His expression didn't change.
But his hands, resting on his knees as he crouched, went very still.
"The second time, she picked him up.
He started crying — he didn't know her well enough, he always cried with strangers at night — and she shook him.
Not hard enough to—" Lily stopped.
Steadied herself.
"Hard enough that I came in and took him from her arms.
She told me if I mentioned it to anyone, she would have me fired and make sure I never worked in this city again."
"And you believed her," Victor said.
"I believed she could do it," Lily said.
"Yes."
Serena's voice came from across the room, smooth and controlled.
"This is a fantasy.
She's been building this story for weeks because she's obsessed with you, Victor.
Half the female staff in this house are.
She saw an opportunity and she—"
"She has a bruise forming across her ribs," Victor said.
Still not looking at Serena.
"I can see it from here."
Silence.
"Tell me what happened today," he said to Lily.
Lily looked down at Ethan.
His breathing had steadied.
His eyes were closed, lashes wet against his cheek.
She pulled him a little closer before she spoke.
"You were supposed to be gone until tomorrow.
She knew that.
She came downstairs after lunch and told me to take the rest of the day off.
I said I couldn't leave Ethan alone with—" She paused.
"I said I wasn't comfortable leaving him.
She told me I had no choice.
I went to the kitchen to get my things and I heard him screaming."
Victor stood up slowly.
He turned and looked at Serena for the first time since he'd entered the room.
Whatever Serena saw in his face made her take one step back.
"It's her word against mine," Serena said.
Her voice was still controlled, but something underneath it had shifted.
"She's a nanny, Victor.
She has nothing.
I have lawyers, I have—"
"Marcus," Victor said.
A man appeared from the hallway.
Broad-shouldered, quiet.
He had been there the whole time.
"Pull the security footage from the foyer," Victor said.
"Today.
All of it."
Serena's face went white.
"There are no cameras in the—" she started.
"I had them installed last month," Victor said.
"You weren't here that week."
The room was absolutely silent.
Serena looked at the hallway.
Then at the front door.
Then back at Victor.
May you like
And Lily understood, for the first time, that Serena had built her entire plan on one assumption — that no one in this house would ever choose a nanny's word over hers.
She had been wrong about that from the very beginning.
