CHAPTER 4

ELENA

I stared at the number on the flyer for a long moment before I finally made myself dial it.

"Private recruitment services."

"Hello. I'm calling about the caregiver position."

The woman on the other end moved briskly through her questions.... my age, my experience with children, my educational background, whether I could live in full-time, whether I understood what absolute confidentiality actually meant in practice. I answered every one honestly, though I left out exactly why I had nowhere else to be that evening.

"If you're available, we'd like you to come in for an interview," she said finally.

"Today?"

"Yes. The address is...."

I fumbled my phone out and typed it in before she'd even finished the sentence.

"Seven o'clock."

"I'll be there."

I hung up and stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, my bags at my feet, feeling something I hadn't let myself feel since walking out of Daniel's office.

Hope. Small, unfamiliar, and entirely inconvenient given how little reason I had to trust it.

---

The gates alone told me I might be out of my depth. Wrought iron, twice my height, a guard station built like it belonged to an embassy rather than a private home. I gave my name, and after a short call I couldn't hear, he waved me through.

A woman in a sharply tailored black suit was already waiting at the door.

"Miss Bennett?"

"It’s Miss Matthews" I said not wanting to have anything still associated with the monster name Daniel Bennett.

"Mrs. Carter. I'll take you in. Someone will meet you shortly for the interview."

I followed her through an entrance hall large enough to swallow my old home twice over and mind you my old home was huge...and that was when I saw it, engraved discreetly into the marble beside the staircase.

BLACKWOOD.

I stopped walking.

"Blackwood?"

Mrs. Carter turned back, unbothered. "Yes?"

"Mr. Blackwood.... as in...." I couldn't quite finish it.

A faint, knowing smile touched her mouth. "I'm afraid there's only one."

Adrian Blackwood. The cold and ruthless multi-billionaire whose name showed up in every headlines, he was the richest man in New York who had industries in every part of the continent. Never in a million years would I imagine setting foot in his house, let alone interview to work in it. I became suddenly, acutely aware of my wrinkled dress and the two bags I'd been too proud to leave in a locker somewhere.

I didn't have time to feel the full weight of that before a crash echoed down the hallway.

Mrs. Carter's head snapped toward the sound. "What was that?"

She was already moving. I followed without being asked.

A second crash. Then I saw them...a small boy seated at a dining table built for a dozen people, a shattered plate scattered across the floor near his feet, two women hovering around him with the particular exhaustion of people who'd run out of ideas.

He wasn't shouting. He wasn't crying. He simply sat there, small hands clenched in his lap, his face utterly still, as if the chaos around him belonged to someone else entirely.

"Please, Elias." One of the women knelt beside him, spoon extended, her voice worn thin from repetition. "Just one bite."

Nothing. Not a flicker.

She guided the spoon closer. He turned his face away, slow and deliberate, without a single sound.

"Elias." Nothing again.

Mrs. Carter exhaled beside me. "He hasn't eaten properly since the day before yesterday."

I studied him for a moment before I moved any closer. It wasn't defiance in his face. It was something closer to distance.... a child who had learned, somewhere, that going quiet was safer than asking for anything.

I stepped forward. One of the women half-rose. "You really shouldn't...."

I raised a hand, gentle, not quite an apology. "It's all right."

I crouched a few feet from him. "Elias?"

His eyes moved to me. He said nothing. But he looked, and that alone seemed to surprise the women behind me.

I didn't ask him to eat. I reached for the spoon they'd been fighting him with. I picked up a piece of food, and tasted it myself.

I made a face.... an exaggerated, thoroughly unimpressed face.

His eyes tracked every second of it.

I took a second bite and shook my head, more dramatically this time, like the food had personally offended me.

Still nothing from him. But he was watching now, fully, the way you watch something you haven't decided whether to trust yet.

"You know," I said, mostly to myself, "I think your food is terrible."

One of the women made a small, scandalized sound behind me. I didn't look away from Elias.

I picked up the spoon again, took another bite, then held it toward him.... not close enough to feel like pressure, just close enough to be an offer.

I waited. I didn't fill the silence. I let it sit exactly as long as he needed it to.

Several seconds passed. Then, slowly, his mouth opened.

The room went utterly still.

He took the bite.

I kept my face calm, though something in my chest loosened all at once. "See?"

He looked at me. Then at the spoon in my hand, like he was deciding whether the arrangement could be trusted twice.

I offered it again. He ate again.

Nobody in that room moved. Mrs. Carter stared like she was watching something physically impossible. One of the nannies pressed a hand over her mouth.

"What is happening in here?"

The voice came from the doorway, low and edged with an authority that filled the room before I'd even turned around.

Tall. A black suit that fit with the precision of a man who left nothing to chance. A face carved into stillness, the kind of composure that looked less like calm and more like danger and I immediately realized who he was, Mr Adrian Blackwood.

His eyes went straight to the boy and I immediately saw the resemblance. Then to me. Then, sharper, back to his son again.

"Elias."

The boy's gaze lifted to him. He didn't answer. He never did, apparently…. but something in the way his father said the name told me this silence wasn't new, and wasn't something anyone here had learned to stop grieving.

Mr. Blackwood crossed the room, his attention fixed on the plate. "He hasn't eaten in two days."

"He didn't need to be forced," I said quietly. "He needed someone to stop trying to force him."

His eyes cut to mine, assessing, giving nothing away. "And who exactly are you?"

I rose to my feet. "Elena Matthews. I'm here for the caregiver interview."

He studied me for a long beat, then glanced back at his son... and I watched something shift behind his composure when Elias, unprompted, reached for the spoon himself this time.

"Come to my office," Adrian said.

I nodded, already turning to follow. He stopped me before I'd taken a step.

"You're hired."

I blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"You're hired”