Chapter 3 - The Midnight Midnight Raid, The Burnt Toast, And The Secret Behind The Locked Door
Dinner was a masterclass in passive-aggressive silence.
The dining room table was long enough to seat twenty people, but Adrian, the four boys, and I sat clustered near one end, separated by vast stretches of polished mahogany.
Adrian sat at the head of the table, his eyes darting between his sons and me with a hawk-like vigilance, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
It didn't come.
Evan pushed his roast chicken around his plate with a fork, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
Caleb stabbed his carrots repeatedly as if they had personally offended him.
Noah sat silently, still wearing dry socks I had forced him to put on, glaring at his water glass with intense hostility.
And Luke tried surreptitiously to smuggle a sugar cube into his pocket before I caught him with a polite, unblinking stare that made him drop it back onto the silver tray with a guilty squeak.
Not a single plate was broken.
Not a single scream echoed through the halls.
Adrian watched me across the table, his expression unreadable, though the tension in his broad shoulders suggested he was bracing for an earthquake that was simply taking its time to arrive.
"Miss Carter," Adrian said quietly as the housekeeper cleared away the untouched vegetables. "How was your first afternoon?"
"Quiet," I replied, cutting a piece of chicken. "The acoustics in this hallway are wonderful for tracking footsteps."
Evan’s head snapped up, his dark eyes narrowing at me across the table.
"You didn't tell Dad about the water bucket," Evan said, his voice laced with suspicion, as if waiting for me to drop the hammer and get them grounded for a month.
"Why would I?" I asked innocently, taking a sip of water. "Noah missed completely, and he ended up with wet socks. I'd say nature already administered the appropriate punishment."
Noah glared at me from across the table, his cheeks flushing pink again, but he didn't say a word. He just lowered his head and poked at his potatoes.
After dinner, Adrian retreated back into his study, closing the heavy wooden door behind him like a man descending into a bunker.
I spent the next three hours helping—or rather, attempting to help—the boys with their homework, which mostly involved dodging wadded-up math worksheets and convincing Luke that spelling words couldn't be defeated with a Nerf gun.
By 10:00 PM, the house was finally, hauntingly quiet.
The lights in the boys' bedrooms were turned off, though I could hear muffled whispers and the occasional creak of floorboards leaking out from beneath Evan’s door down the hall.
I didn't go to sleep.
I sat on the edge of the plush guest bed in my room, staring up at the vaulted ceiling, waiting.
Seventy-two hours was a long time.
And boys like Evan, Caleb, Noah, and Luke didn't test boundaries just to be mean; they tested them to see if you would abandon them the moment things got difficult.
Every single caregiver before me had walked out or been fired because they couldn't handle the rejection.
They took the boys' anger personally.
They didn't see the terror hiding underneath.
At exactly 11:45 PM, I heard it.
A soft, almost imperceptible click of a door latch turning down the hall.
Followed by the whisper of bare feet padding across the hardwood floor.
I slipped out of bed, not bothering to turn on my lamp, and quietly opened my bedroom door by two inches.
Peering out into the dimly lit corridor, I saw a small shadow creeping toward the grand staircase.
It wasn't Evan, the eleven-year-old ringleader.
It was Noah, clutching a small, battered stuffed bear under his arm, his pajama pants dragging on the floor as he tiptoed toward the stairs.
I silently stepped out into the hallway, moving like a ghost across the carpet.
Noah reached the top of the stairs, peering down into the dark, echoing foyer below.
"Going somewhere, Batman's sidekick?" I whispered softly right behind his ear.
Noah jumped six feet in the air, letting out a sharp gasp before spinning around, his big eyes wide with sheer panic in the dark.
"You!" he whispered fiercely, clutching his stuffed bear to his chest as if defending it from a robber. "You're supposed to be asleep!"
"And you're supposed to be in bed dreaming about spelling words," I replied, leaning my shoulder against the wall. "What are you doing wandering around a haunted mansion at midnight?"
Noah’s defiant glare wavered for a split second, his lower lip trembling ever so slightly before he clamped his jaw shut to hide it.
"I wasn't doing anything," he muttered, looking down at his bare toes. "I just... I wanted a glass of water."
"The kitchen is downstairs," I noted, raising an eyebrow. "And you have a bathroom with a sink right inside your bedroom."
Noah didn't answer. He turned his head away, staring down into the dark abyss of the foyer.
I crouched down so I was at eye level with the seven-year-old boy.
Up close, I could see the dark circles under his eyes—the universal trademark of a child who hadn't slept through the night in years.
"Noah," I said softly, dropping all the sarcasm and sharp wit I had used during the day. "You can lie to me, and you can throw water buckets at me, and you can try to scare me away just like you did the other fourteen nannies. But you and I both know you didn't come out here for water."
Noah’s chin wobbled.
"I hate it here," he whispered, the words tearing out of his throat like glass shards. "I hate this big, stupid house. I hate the guards outside. I hate the way Dad looks at us like we're broken toys he doesn't know how to fix. And I miss her."
The raw, shattering grief in his voice hit me right in the chest like a physical blow.
This was it.
This was the core of the anger.
The fourteen caregivers before me had seen broken plates, water buckets, and screaming matches.
None of them had looked past the noise to see the seven-year-old boy standing in the dark, weeping silently for a mother who was never coming back through that front door.
I reached out and gently placed my hand over his small, trembling fingers.
"I know you miss her, Noah," I said, my own voice thick with emotion as I thought of Maya fighting for her life in a Manhattan hospital. "And it's okay to hate this house. It's cold, and it's too big, and it feels empty even when everyone is inside."
Noah looked up at me, tears spilling over his eyelashes and tracking down his cheeks in the moonlight.
"Are you going to quit tomorrow?" he asked, his voice cracking painfully. "Like Miss Sarah did? And Mr. Henderson?"
I squeezed his hand a little tighter.
"I don't quit, Noah," I promised him, looking straight into his tear-filled eyes. "I'm not going anywhere. Now, what do you say we go down to the kitchen, ignore your dad's strict rules about midnight snacks, and burn some toast together?"
Noah let out a wet, watery snort that sounded halfway between a sob and a laugh.
"You can't cook toast," he mumbled, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "You'll probably set the microwave on fire."
"Hey! My toast-burning skills are legendary," I protested, standing up and offering him my hand. "Come on, partner. Let's go see if your dad has any ice cream hidden behind the frozen vegetables."
As Noah slipped his small, warm hand into mine, I felt a sudden, sharp draft sweep down the grand staircase.
I looked up toward the third-floor landing—an area Adrian had explicitly told me during our tour was off-limits and permanently locked.
The heavy wooden door at the top of the third-floor stairs was standing wide open by a fraction of an inch.
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And standing in the shadows of the third-floor landing, watching us in absolute silence, was a pair of dark, unblinking eyes.
Adrian Vale.
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