The infection deepened. Skin began to die. She bathed in tears because water stung like acid. She slept on her stomach because lying on her back was unbearable. She skipped gym. She moved like someone decades older.
Daniel noticed nothing.
“Everything okay, sweetheart?” he’d ask distractedly.
“Everything’s fine, Dad.”
He was already looking at his phone.
Then Teresa arrived.
Teresa was fifty-two, broad-shouldered, steady-handed, with a lifetime of hard work behind her. She needed the job desperately—her daughter, Anna Lopez, five months pregnant and recently laid off, depended on her.
When she answered the ad for a live-in cook and housekeeper, she didn’t expect to walk into a nightmare.
Vanessa eyed her coldly. “You stay in the back rooms. Sundays off. That’s it.”
Teresa nodded. She needed the salary.
On her first day, she met Chloe sitting alone in the kitchen, eating cold pasta straight from the pot.
“Hi, sweetheart. I’m Teresa. What’s your name?”
“Chloe,” the girl whispered, as if kindness startled her.
“That pasta’s cold. Let me warm it.”
Teresa added cheese, oil, seasoning. Chloe ate slowly, savoring it.
Something was wrong. Teresa felt it immediately.