“I pay a fortune for the best care money can buy,” Marcus said coldly. “I have nurses on call 24/7. You are the maid. Your job is to clean floors—not touch my son.”
His voice turned icy.
“Put him in his crib. Then pack your things. You’re fired.”
Emily blinked, wounded but dignified.
“I never meant to harm him,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “He was burning up… I couldn’t just ignore it.”
She carried Zion upstairs slowly, holding him close as if it might be the last time.
Later, Marcus sat alone in his office.
The mansion had returned to the suffocating silence he hated.
He opened the baby monitor on his phone. Zion slept in his crib, cheeks still flushed.
Emily’s words echoed in his mind.
“I couldn’t ignore it.”
Upstairs, Emily closed her small worn suitcase. On top of her folded clothes sat a photograph of a boy in a wheelchair—her younger brother Caleb, whom she had cared for for years before he died from severe epilepsy.
That loss had taught her everything about illness… and how quickly life could disappear.
She was ready to leave when suddenly—
A sound tore through the mansion.
It wasn’t normal crying.
It was a harsh, painful gasp.
Emily’s heart stopped.
She knew that sound.