Chapter 1 - The Incident
The wooden train hit Cameron Jenkins in the shoulder before she had taken three steps into the penthouse.
Behind it came a three-year-old girl with white knuckles and a fist already raised.
She was the fifteenth woman to walk through that door, and the last one in the building who hadn’t run.
Cameron knelt on the marble and did not reach for her.
“Hit me if you need to,” she said.
“But I’m not leaving you.”
Across the room, Matteo Duca watched without hope.
He was a man who owned half of Manhattan and could not calm his own daughter.
Then the child said four words that emptied the air.
“No blue room.”
The heavy crystal glass in Matteo’s hand slipped from his fingers.
It shattered against the floor in a devastating explosion of sharp shards.
Matteo did not look at the broken glass.
His dark, exhausted eyes locked entirely onto Cameron.
“Get your bag,” he ordered in a voice completely drained of emotion.
“You are going to take Leah down to the lobby and wait for my driver.”
Cameron stood up slowly, her shoulder throbbing from the wooden train.
“I was hired for the night shift, Mr. Duca.”
“The shift is over,” he snapped, stepping over the shattered crystal.
“Nobody mentions that room in this house.”
Leah grabbed the fabric of Cameron’s cheap pants and buried her face in her knees.
The little girl was trembling so violently her teeth were chattering.
Cameron placed a gentle hand on the child’s dark hair and looked the billionaire in the eye.
“I am not taking her anywhere until you tell me what is in the blue room.”
Matteo stopped walking and stared at the brave, foolish woman standing in his foyer.
May you like
“My wife,” Matteo whispered.
“And if you open that door, she will kill us all.”
