From the tall window of his third-floor office, Adrian Bennett watched a taxi disappear through the gates. Inside it sat the fifteenth nanny in five months. She pressed a tissue to her wrist where tiny bite marks still bled.
At thirty-four, Adrian was a giant in the tech industry, fearless in boardrooms and brutal in negotiations. Yet nothing had prepared him for fatherhood after tragedy.
Since his wife, Laura, died in a sudden car accident, his eighteen-month-old son Oliver had become unreachable—angry, inconsolable, wild with grief he couldn’t name. He bit, screamed, and rejected everyone, including his own father.
“Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Lopez, the housekeeper, said anxiously from the doorway, “the agency says they have no one else to send. They won’t take our calls anymore.”
Adrian exhaled slowly. “And Oliver?”
“He’s been crying for nearly an hour. I tried to comfort him. He threw a truck at me.” She hesitated. “Perhaps the boarding program in Switzerland… they specialize in difficult children.”