Chapter 6: The Groundskeeper's Cottage
The rain had not let up.
I crossed the garden with Leo pressed against my chest, my cardigan pulled over his head, my feet finding the gravel path by memory — I had walked it every morning for six weeks, in daylight, in a different life.
The cottage appeared through the dark.
One window lit.
A thin line of yellow under the door.
I knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again, harder.
"Brennan.
My name is Nora.
I work in the house.
Alessio Romano sent me."
A long pause.
Then the sound of something heavy being moved.
The door opened three inches, chain still on, and one eye regarded me from the gap.
Old.
Sharp.
Unimpressed.
"You're the nanny."
"Yes."
"Why are you wet?"
"Because it's raining and I ran forty meters through it.
Alessio said you'd know what to do.
He said to tell you—"
"Come in." The chain dropped.
The door opened.
The cottage was small and warm and smelled of pipe tobacco and machine oil.
A workbench along one wall.
A kettle on the stove.
Brennan was shorter than I'd imagined from his voice — compact, white-haired, moving with the careful economy of a man whose joints had opinions.
He looked at Leo.
"The baby all right?"
"He will be.
He needs warmth and quiet."
Brennan pointed at the armchair nearest the stove without a word.
I sat.
He disappeared into the back room and returned with a folded blanket — wool, heavy, smelling of cedar — and draped it over Leo without being asked.
Then he put the kettle on.
"What happened," he said.
It wasn't a question either.
It was a door he was opening.
I told him.
All of it.
The bead.
The footage.
Caruso.
The text.
The passage.
Brennan listened without interrupting.
He poured two cups of tea when the kettle boiled, set one on the table beside me, and held the other in both hands.
"Caruso," he said finally.
"You knew him."
"Knew of him.
Never liked him.
Too comfortable." He said it like a diagnosis.
"A man in that position should never be comfortable.
Comfort makes you look for more of it."
"Alessio said he would have helped.
If Caruso had asked."
Brennan looked into his cup.
"Some men can't ask.
Pride or shame, doesn't matter which.
Both lead the same direction."
Leo shifted in my arms.
His eyes opened — dark, like his father's — and he looked at Brennan with the solemn attention of a baby who has decided to evaluate a stranger.
Brennan looked back at him.
"Hello, boy," he said quietly.
Leo's mouth worked.
Then he closed his eyes again.
Something in Brennan's face moved.
He looked away quickly.
"Ferro," I said.
"Alessio told me to call a number saved as Ferro if he didn't contact me in forty minutes.
Do you know who that is?"
"I know what that is," Brennan said.
"It means Alessio is done being patient." He set down his cup.
"How long has it been?"
I checked the phone.
"Twenty-six minutes."
"Then we wait."
We sat in the warmth and the rain and the quiet.
Leo slept.
Brennan refilled my cup without asking.
The clock on the mantle ticked.
At thirty-nine minutes, the phone in my hand lit up.
One word from Alessio's number.
*Secured.*
I let out a breath I had been holding since the passage.
Brennan read the screen over my shoulder.
"Good," he said.
Then: "Drink your tea.
It'll go cold."
I drank my tea.
Outside, the rain began to ease.
Not stop — ease.
The way things do when the worst has passed but the world is still deciding what comes next.
"He'll want to know what's on that footage," Brennan said.
"He already knows."
"He'll want it confirmed by someone else.
Officially."
"I know."
"That means you'll have to stay."
I looked down at Leo.
His lashes were dark against his cheek.
His chest rose and fell.
"I know," I said again.
Brennan nodded once, as though something had been settled.
Then he picked up his cup, looked at the fire, and said: "You left nursing.
Nine years of it.
Trauma pediatrics.
That's not the kind of thing you leave for a nanny position unless something happened."
I didn't answer.
"None of my business," he said.
"I'm just saying.
Whatever it was — you used it tonight.
For him." He nodded toward Leo.
"That counts for something."
The fire crackled.
Leo breathed.
May you like
I didn't trust my voice, so I said nothing.
But I didn't look away from the fire either.
