Chapter 1 - The Fever
At 5:17 on a Tuesday morning, Dominic Mason opened his eyes and saw his maid asleep beside his bed.
She had a toddler curled against her chest.
For several seconds, he thought the fever was making him hallucinate.
Then he noticed the basin of cloudy water on the floor.
He saw the stack of damp towels.
He looked at the thermometer beside an untouched glass of orange juice.
And then he felt Megan Foster’s right hand, still wrapped loosely around his own.
She had fallen asleep sitting upright in a leather chair sometime before dawn.
Her head had tipped against the mattress.
Her brown hair had come loose from its ponytail, revealing dark circles beneath her eyes.
Her eighteen-month-old son slept under a faded yellow blanket across her lap.
Dominic stared at them in the quiet room.
Nobody ever stayed.
Not after he gave them enough reasons to leave.
For twenty years, he had made sure of that.
Yet this woman had spent the entire night cooling his fever.
This was the stubborn, underpaid house cleaner he had criticized for humming and talking too much.
She was the one who had once accused his wheelchair of making marks on his own marble floor.
But she had stayed when there was no audience.
There was no bonus.
There was no advantage.
There was no one downstairs to witness how kind she had been.
Something unfamiliar tightened in Dominic’s chest.
Before he realized what his face was doing, the corners of his mouth lifted.
It was not a polite smile.
It was not the expression he wore for investors when a photographer demanded one.
It was clumsy and small.
It was almost painful.
But it was real.
At thirty-six years old, Dominic Mason smiled for the first time since the night his father died.
The woman who caused it was fast asleep.
Dominic gently pulled his hand away to avoid waking her.
He reached for his phone on the nightstand to check the security feeds.
The screen illuminated his face in the dark room.
His heart suddenly stopped beating.
The camera in his private study was offline.
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The digital safe behind his father's portrait had been opened at exactly 3:00 AM.
And the security log showed the passcode used belonged to Megan Foster.
