Chapter 14 - The Guardian of the House
No one had ever defended her from herself before.
Leo reached into his desk and placed something on the surface. It was a small pink crayon drawing.
Lily had drawn it weeks ago. Beatrice recognized the shaky shapes. A big woman in a yellow apron. A little girl holding her hand. A dark-haired man standing beside them beneath a lopsided sun.
“She hid this in my coat pocket,” Leo said. “I found it tonight.”
Beatrice pressed her taped fingers to her mouth. “I thought she drew me too big,” she whispered.
Leo’s expression softened painfully.
“She drew you the way she sees you. Big enough to keep the monsters away.”
For a moment, Beatrice could not breathe.
Then Leo said, “You are no longer a maid here.”
Her stomach dropped. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t send me away from her.”
“I am not sending you away.” Leo stepped closer. “I am asking you to stay as Lily’s legal guardian inside this household. You will oversee her care, her schedule, her schooling, and every person allowed near her. You will be head of household.
Your salary will be ten times what you make now. You will have a suite beside Lily’s room. If anyone disrespects you, they answer to me.”
Beatrice blinked at him. “I don’t know how to be that.”
“You knew how to be it when my daughter was dying.”
“That was different.”
“No,” Leo said. “That was the truth. Everything before tonight was what other people taught you to believe.”
She looked toward the broken door. “I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
The admission hung between them like something sacred.
Leo Rossi, feared by half the city, lowered his voice.
“When I heard you say she had stopped breathing, I was not a boss. I was not a Rossi. I was a father who had failed to see the snake in his own house.”
“You didn’t fail Lily,” Beatrice said.
His eyes lifted to hers. “You called me when it could have cost you your life.”
“She’s worth my life.”
Something in Leo’s face broke open. Not much. Just enough.
May you like
“So are you,” he said.
Beatrice cried then, silently and helplessly, because she did not know what to do with kindness when it came from a man everyone else feared.
