Chapter 1 - The Iron Gates
I stood completely still before the imposing iron gates of the massive Coleman estate.
They opened silently like a giant metallic mouth waiting to swallow me entirely whole.
My name is Sarah Mitchell.
I am technically just a fifteen-dollar-an-hour nanny hired to watch over two severely sick children.
Most ordinary people assume that danger in a notorious mafia household announces itself with loud gunfire and violent men.
They are completely and utterly wrong.
The most lethal threats always arrive silently in the very air you breathe.
They hide within the expensive walls surrounding the innocent people you would die to protect.
I learned this absolute truth standing inside a billionaire's pristine marble hallway on my very first day of work.
The elite nanny agency sent me here because three million dollars worth of top medical specialists had completely failed.
The six-year-old twins were suffering from a mysterious illness that defied every logical explanation.
Leo and Max were tragically withering away in their massive custom beds.
Expensive doctors paraded through the mansion daily with their useless theories and heavy prescription pads.
Nobody in this massive house of expensive white coats had bothered to ask the mansion itself what it actually knew.
I walked quietly past heavily armed guards and priceless paintings to reach the children's nursery.
Dr. Aris was standing arrogantly by the bedroom door with a smug expression on his perfectly tanned face.
He laughed openly when I politely asked about the environmental history of the old estate.
He called me nothing more than uneducated household help and told me to stick to folding tiny socks.
I completely ignored his arrogant insults and walked into the sterile room to look at the sleeping boys.
Their skin was dangerously pale and their breathing was incredibly shallow.
That was exactly when I saw the large ventilation grate high up on the wall near the painted ceiling.
The white metal cover was heavily dusted with a thick layer of gray lint.
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But the four small metal screws holding it securely in place were completely spotless and shining.
Someone in this house had unscrewed that specific grate very recently.
