“Vanessa,” Maya whispered one night, “I think I need a doctor.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“But it hurts.”
“Do you want me to tell your father what you did?” Vanessa snapped. “That you broke his table?”
Maya shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Then be quiet.”
Eight months passed.
Eight months of untreated infection. The wound deepened. The skin began to die.
Maya bathed crying because the water burned. She slept on her stomach because she couldn’t lie on her back. She skipped gym class because she couldn’t run.
And Daniel?
“Everything okay, sweetheart?” he asked during rushed goodbyes.
“Everything’s fine, Dad,” Maya replied.
He was already checking his phone.
Then Teresa arrived.
Teresa was fifty-two, heavyset, with hands shaped by decades of caring. She’d worked as a cook and housekeeper for twenty-five years—and she had no tolerance for injustice.
She needed the job desperately. Her daughter Ana, five months pregnant, had just been laid off. No partner. No savings. Living together in a small apartment.
When Teresa saw the listing—live-in cook and housekeeper—she called immediately.
Three days later, she stood inside the mansion.