Chapter 1 - The Secret In The Master Bedroom
The silence in the room was deafening. I stood there, a man who commanded thousands, a man who tore down empires without a second thought, completely paralyzed by the quiet words of a nanny. “Before you send me away, you should ask them why they begged me not to leave.” Marisol’s voice didn't shake. Her dark eyes held my furious gaze, completely unfazed by the dangerous aura I projected. She carefully untangled herself from my three sleeping sons. Leo, my eldest at eight. Mateo, only six. And little Elian, just four years old. They shifted on my massive king-sized bed, their small hands grasping at the empty space Marisol left behind. I watched her stand up. She smoothed out her simple cotton dress. She didn’t ask for her paycheck. She didn’t plead for her job. She just walked past me, stopping only for a fraction of a second at the doorway. "They are good boys, Mr. Mercer. They just need their father to stop acting like a ghost." And then she was gone. The heavy oak door clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone in the dim light of my bedroom with the three boys I hadn’t known how to speak to in over a year. My chest tightened with a mixture of rage and a foreign, unsettling guilt. I approached the bed. Leo stirred. His eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the shadows of the room. When he saw me standing there instead of Marisol, his small body instantly went rigid. Panic flashed across his face. He scrambled backward, shaking his brothers awake. "Where is she?" Leo demanded, his voice cracking. "Where's Marisol?" "She's gone," I said, my voice harsher than I intended. "And I want to know what you were doing in my room." Mateo woke up crying, clinging to Leo. Elian buried his face in the pillows. "We brought her here!" Leo yelled, tears streaming down his face. It was the loudest he had spoken to me since their mother’s funeral. "Why?" I demanded, stepping closer. "Because of the monsters!" Mateo sobbed. I sighed, rubbing my temples. "There are no monsters. How many times do I have to tell you?" "Yes, there are!" Leo shouted, his fists clenched. "The monsters that took Mom! They come when it's dark!" I froze. "What are you talking about?" Leo looked at me, his eyes filled with a terror that made my blood run cold. "We heard the men talking," Leo whispered, his voice trembling. "Your men in the suits. They said Mom got taken away because she wasn't protected. They said the bad men got her." My heart stopped. My wife had died of a sudden aneurysm. A tragic, unavoidable medical emergency. But my men, my foolish, careless soldiers, had been talking in code about a business deal gone wrong around the children. They had used the phrase "taken away" and "not protected." My sons had overheard. They thought my enemies had murdered their mother in the dark. "We came to your room," Leo choked out, "because it smells like you. The bad men are scared of you. We thought if we slept here, we would be safe. But we were still scared. So Marisol stayed to guard the door." She hadn’t been overstepping her bounds. She hadn’t been disrespecting my privacy. She had been standing watch for three terrified little boys who thought assassins were coming for them in the night. And I had just thrown her out on the street.
