“It usually is.”
The days continue.
By the second week, Valentina starts waiting for you near the upstairs landing with books in her arms and accusations disguised as questions. “This one is boring,” she announces about a fairy-tale collection. “The princess cries too much.”
You take the book, skim the page, and say, “Then perhaps the dragon had excellent reasons.”
That startles a laugh out of her so bright and sudden it seems to surprise her too.
Soon you are reading to both girls in the evenings when their official routines have fallen apart and the nannies are busy or rotating out again. You do voices for dragons and kings, make queens sarcastic on purpose, and always improve the endings when stories insult intelligent women. Sofía curls close beside you with her repaired rabbit. Valentina pretends she is only there for her sister, then interrupts every few pages to argue with the plot.
Once, at the edge of your vision, you notice Daniel standing in the half-dark of the hall listening.
He leaves before the story ends.
One afternoon everything shifts.
It begins with broken porcelain.
You are dusting the formal sitting room while one of the temporary caterers crosses behind you carrying a tray stacked too high with coffee cups for an investor lunch Señor Santillán is supposedly hosting off-site. At the exact moment you turn, one cup slides. You catch it, but the saucer drops, shattering near the Persian rug.
The caterer swears under his breath and hurries off without looking back. You kneel at once to gather the pieces, pulse quickening with that old servant panic every working-class woman knows. Breakage in a rich house is never just breakage. It is evidence. Ranking. Proof that carelessness has a class.
Before you can collect the last shard, a hard voice cuts across the room.
“What happened here?”
You look up.
A man stands in the doorway of the study. Not Daniel. Not a worker. Not any member of staff. He wears a dark tailored suit, silver watch, immaculate white shirt, and the expression of someone accustomed to walking into rooms and having all noise reorganize itself around his opinion. He is handsome, but not in the easy way. More like architecture. Expensive, controlled, and built to make people feel smaller by comparison.
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