Chapter 1 - THE BABY WHO REMEMBERED
The question Liana Graves was terrified to ask had nothing to do with Matteo Varric's reputation.
It was simpler, and in some ways crueler.
“Has he been sick?”
Matteo's expression hardened. “Why?”
“Because that's not how a baby cries when he's only tired.”
The older guard took another step forward. “Mr. Varric, the woman hasn't been cleared to—”
“Back up, Dario,” Matteo said, never taking his eyes off Liana.
The guard obeyed. Nobody in the foyer spoke above the baby's ragged breathing. Nico's fingers were still reaching for Liana, his face flushed and wet, his body arching away from his father as if he needed to cross the space between them to survive.
Liana had once known exactly what to do with that kind of panic. She had rocked her own little girl through fevers and nightmares and the peculiar terror that sometimes arrived when an infant woke in a strange place. Then, twenty-two days ago, she had learned there were things a mother could do right and still lose everything.
“I can't tell you what's wrong,” she said. “But I can try to help him feel safe while you find out.”
Matteo looked down at his son. Something exhausted and frightened crossed his face. He had the power to order men out of rooms and buildings out of existence. He could not command a nine-month-old to stop hurting.
“Wash your hands,” he said finally.
Liana glanced at the immaculate marble. “There's a sink in the service pantry.”
“Dario, take her.”
“I know where it is,” she answered, and then regretted the sharpness in her voice.
Matteo surprised her by saying, “Then go. Please.”
She washed carefully with soap and warm water. In the mirror above the sink she saw a woman she scarcely recognized: hollow cheeks, dark circles, hair pulled into a practical knot, and a red uniform someone had issued without knowing she could barely tolerate the color. Her baby girl, Rosie, had owned a red knitted hat. Liana had put it in a drawer and shut the drawer so hard the handle came off.
When she returned, Nico saw her before anybody announced her presence. The baby gave a breathless little hiccup and held both hands out again.
Matteo hesitated. Then he transferred his son with the awkward care of someone passing a priceless object across a deep river.
Nico clung to Liana's collar. She rested one hand along his back and the other beneath his thighs, turning him so his cheek lay against her shoulder. She swayed once. Twice. Then her palm began moving in a small, steady pattern between his shoulder blades.
Three taps. A pause. Two taps.
It was the rhythm she'd used with Rosie. Not a secret technique, just something she had done when ordinary rocking wasn't enough.
Nico stopped crying.
The silence sounded impossible.
Someone in the hallway dropped a tray. Liana heard the crash, but Nico only lifted his head, inspected the chandelier, and settled his face against her shoulder again. His fingers caught the thin silver chain around her neck. On it hung a small enamel star, the only thing she had worn to her daughter's funeral.
Matteo stared at the baby. “He hasn't done that for anyone.”
“How long has he been crying?”
“Three nights. Maybe longer. He sleeps for forty minutes and wakes screaming.”
“Was there a change in his routine?”
Matteo's gaze flicked toward the staircase. “His nurse left.”
“Why?”
“I was told she resigned.”
“Who told you?”
A woman's voice answered from the landing. “I did.”
A tall, silver-haired woman descended in a navy silk dress, her expression composed enough to make her anger almost invisible. She looked at Liana holding the child and stopped.
“Matteo,” she said. “Who is this?”
“The new housemaid. She got him quiet.”
“I can see that.” The woman's smile was thin. “I'm his aunt Vittoria. You may give Nico back to his father now.”
Nico tightened his grip when Liana moved. A whimper escaped him.
“Not yet,” Matteo said.
Vittoria's eyes narrowed. “You've spent weeks insisting we keep strangers away from him.”
“And he's spent weeks miserable.”
“He's grieving his mother.”
Liana watched Matteo's jaw set. His wife, Sofia, had died seven months before. Everyone in the house talked about the loss as though it explained everything, though Nico had been an infant when it happened.
“Grief doesn't mean you ignore the possibility of pain,” Liana said quietly.
Vittoria looked at her as if a chair had interrupted a board meeting. “Nobody asked you for a diagnosis.”
“I'm not giving one.”
Matteo raised a hand. “Enough. Call Dr. Vale back.”
“Dr. Vale examined Nico yesterday,” Vittoria replied. “He said the child was healthy.”
“Then he can examine him again.”
Liana felt Nico's little hand brush her neck. When she shifted him, he rubbed at his right ear and cried out softly. She noticed a faint irritation behind the ear, barely visible beneath his fine hair.
“Mr. Varric,” she said. “I'd like a pediatrician who isn't already treating him to check his ears. And anything else they think matters.”
Vittoria laughed once. “You want to replace a specialist because a maid has a feeling?”
“Because a baby can't explain what hurts,” Liana replied.
Matteo met her eyes for a long moment. “I'll arrange it.”
A small concession. It changed the balance of the room.
Vittoria pressed her lips together, excused herself, and retreated upstairs. Dario watched her leave. Matteo watched Dario watching her.
“Have you ever worked with babies?” Matteo asked Liana.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She kept swaying. “At home. And for a few months, helping at St. Agnes Children's Center while my daughter was being treated.”
His face softened, almost imperceptibly. “Your daughter was ill?”
“She was.”
“Is she better?”
The question found the rawest place in her.
Liana looked toward the windows, where nighttime was pressed against the glass. “No.”
The word landed. Matteo glanced at the star on her necklace, then at her face, and understood enough not to ask anything else.
They moved into a smaller sitting room. Liana settled into an armchair while Nico slept against her shoulder, one tiny sock escaping his foot. Matteo sat across from them without removing his suit jacket. On the wall hung a photograph of a dark-haired woman holding a newborn and laughing into sunlight.
“Sofia?” Liana asked.
He nodded. “She loved taking terrible photographs. Crooked horizons, half a person's face, blurry dogs.”
“She looks happy.”
“She was.”
For a moment his dangerous world seemed far away. He looked like a father mourning a woman he hadn't finished loving.
“Why did you hire me?” Liana asked.
“I didn't. The housekeeper did.”
“Then why let me hold him?”
His answer came slowly. “Because he looked at you as though somebody had finally come back.”
Liana had to fight the urge to cry. “Babies look for safety. Sometimes someone unfamiliar happens to offer what they need. It doesn't mean I'm the person he lost.”
“I know.” Matteo rubbed a hand down his face. “I know that. I just haven't been able to give him whatever he's been asking for.”
“You're holding him through it. That's something.”
“My sister says I make things worse because he senses how angry I am.”
“Are you angry?”
“Constantly.”
“At him?”
His head snapped up. “Never.”
“Then don't let anyone tell you love has to be perfectly calm to count.”
He stared at her in surprise. She realized she'd spoken as though she had the right to advise him. Before she could apologize, footsteps approached.
A young housekeeper named Alma stood in the doorway with a clean blanket. Her eyes widened at the sight of Nico asleep. She passed the blanket to Liana and leaned down as though to straighten the baby's sock.
In a voice barely above a breath, she said, “Check the nursery camera before they erase it again.”
Liana went still.
Alma straightened and gave Matteo a respectful nod. “Anything else, sir?”
“No. Thank you.”
She left quickly.
“What's wrong?” Matteo asked.
Liana looked at the doorway. She could have pretended not to hear. She was new. She had bills. She had already lost the one person she couldn't bear to lose, and the sensible thing was to stay out of a family capable of employing armed guards inside its home.
But she remembered Rosie in a hospital cot, the monitor glowing quietly beside her. She remembered the nurse who had told her that she was worrying too much. She remembered how much she had wanted somebody to listen.
“A woman just told me to check the nursery camera,” she said. “She thinks someone is deleting footage.”
Matteo's entire posture changed. “Which woman?”
“Alma.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
Matteo took out his phone. “Dario. Get the security archive. Nobody touches it until I'm there.”
He stood, then stopped, looking at his sleeping son.
“Will you stay until I come back?”
Liana glanced at the clock. Her shift was almost over. A bus would take her to a cramped apartment where a silent crib still stood behind a locked bedroom door.
“Yes,” she said. “I'll stay.”
Matteo went toward the study. Through the doorway she heard him calling a doctor who did not know his family name, demanding an appointment before morning.
Nico stirred in her arms. Liana resumed the tiny pattern on his back.
Three taps. A pause. Two taps.
Then, from the hall outside, she heard another voice—Vittoria's—speaking sharply into a telephone.
“He let her touch the baby,” Vittoria whispered. “Find out who recommended her. And get the old recordings out of that house tonight.”
Liana looked down at Nico, asleep and trusting against the unfamiliar red uniform.
May you like
For the first time, she suspected the baby's crying wasn't the family's greatest problem.
It was the thing that had finally made the wrong people afraid.
