He thought about what would happen if he was wrong.
Then he thought about what would happen if he was right and stayed silent.
And Marcus ran.
He had learned to move quietly by the time he was six. No one had taught him. Life had. When you lived in a tiny groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of a billionaire’s property, you learned that your existence was tolerated, not welcomed. You learned how to make yourself small. How to walk like smoke. How to stay out of sight so the wealthy could pretend you weren’t there.
His mother had worked for the Kensington family for eleven years. She had scrubbed floors while women in designer heels stepped over her as though she were part of the architecture. She had worked through illness, grief, exhaustion, and years of humiliation so Marcus could have schoolbooks and a roof.
“We are blessed,” she told him at night, usually when she was too tired to stand straight. “Mr. Kensington gives us work. He lets us live here. We are blessed.”