He thought his employee was going to a warm house, but he found her sleeping on a bench in the rain. When he saw the three pale faces she was hiding under her coat, his life of luxury crumbled in an instant.

Her heart skipped a beat, an arrhythmia brought on by the confusion. They drew closer. The figure was huddled together, curled up in a desperate attempt to conserve heat. It wasn’t a pile of clothes. It was a person.

And it wasn’t just anyone.

“Livia?” Caio whispered, and his own voice sounded strange, alien to him.

It was her. The woman who had cleaned his attic for the past three years. The woman who ironed his shirts perfectly, who left his coffee ready every morning with a shy smile, the woman he greeted with a distracted “good morning” without ever stopping to truly look her in the eyes.

But Livia wasn’t alone. And she wasn’t simply resting.

Under the dim light of a flickering streetlamp, the scene was revealed with brutal clarity. Livia didn’t have an umbrella. She was soaked. Her body trembled violently, not only from the cold, but from the superhuman effort of protecting what she held in her arms.

Caio froze. The world of business, numbers, and success crumbled in an instant. Livia was holding three babies. Three tiny creatures, wrapped in rags and damp towels, clinging to her chest like shipwrecked sailors to a plank in the middle of the ocean.