SHE TOOK A BULLET FOR HIS TWINS—CEO REALIZES HIS NANNY WAS ALWAYS HIS FAMILY

## CHAPTER 2

“Ms. Aldridge mentioned the children were challenging.” “My children,” he said, with a precision that told her he did not appreciate euphemisms, “are grieving. Their mother died six months ago. They are eighteen months old and they do not have the language for what happened to them. So it comes out in other ways. Screaming, refusing to eat, waking at 2 in the morning and not going back down for three hours.” He paused. “The previous caregivers found it exhausting.” Selene thought about her mother in the hospital bed last Tuesday, gripping her hand with both of hers and apologizing for being a burden, the particular helplessness of watching someone you love shrink under the weight of something neither of you could control. “I can handle exhausted,” she said. Something shifted in his expression. Not warmth exactly, but a recalibration. “You’ll live on site. My schedule does not permit regular hours. You will need to be available outside of standard time frames.” “How often?” “Okay,” she said. He studied her. “That’s all you have to say?”

“You’ll need references and a background check.” “I have both ready. I’m certified in pediatric first aid and early childhood development. I have three years of classroom experience with children under five. And I understand that grief in toddlers looks nothing like grief in adults. I’m not looking for a nine-to-five. I need stability, and I need the salary you’re offering. And in exchange I will take care of your children like they are the most important job I have ever had.” She paused. “Because they will be.” The silence stretched, long enough that Selene wondered if she’d said too much, revealed too much of the desperation underneath the professionalism. Then Bastian Caruso said, “Can you start?”

“Tomorrow, if you need me to.” He nodded once, a decisive gesture that seemed to close the conversation entirely, and slid the manila folder across the desk toward her without opening it, apparently no longer needing whatever paperwork it contained to make his decision. “Ms. Aldridge will handle the logistics. Your room is on the residence floor, third door past the elevator. The children’s schedule is inconsistent right now, which is precisely the problem I need solved.” He stood, indicating the interview had concluded, and Selene rose as well, her mind already racing ahead to what she would need to pack, how quickly she could give notice on the small apartment she was renting month to month, whether her mother could manage the transition of care to a new arrangement on such short notice. Some of that must have shown on her face, because he paused at the door. “Is there a problem?” “No,” she said. “Just logistics. I’ll manage it.” He looked at her for a moment longer than the exchange strictly required, something almost like assessment in his gaze, and then nodded again and left her alone in the office to gather herself.

The twins were named Lara and Kit, and they were, as advertised, a great deal of work, more than any of the previous five caregivers had apparently been prepared to handle. Lara was the louder of the two. She had opinions about everything and communicated them with the full force of her eighteen-month-old lungs, a small tyrant who ruled her domain of stuffed animals and building blocks with absolute conviction. Kit was quieter, which Selene initially mistook for easygoing until she realized he simply processed everything more slowly and then acted on it all at once. He had a habit of going very still before he cried, like he was deciding whether it was worth the effort. Usually, he decided yes. The first week, they both cried at bedtime for forty-five minutes straight, and Selene sat on the floor between their cribs and sang every song she could remember, including one her own mother used to hum that she didn’t even know the words to and had to improvise, filling in the gaps with whatever syllables felt right in the moment, discovering that the twins didn’t seem to mind the invented lyrics nearly as much as they minded the silence that came before she started singing at all. By the end of the week, it was thirty minutes. By the end of the second week, twenty. By the end of the first month, Lara would climb into Selene’s lap without being asked, and Kit would bring her his stuffed rabbit, his most sacred possession, and set it on her knee like an offering, a small ritual that Selene came to understand as his particular way of saying he trusted her, delivered without words because words, for Kit, were still slow to come and easily overwhelmed by everything else he was feeling.

She didn’t see much of Bastian Caruso. He left before 7 most mornings and came home after the twins were in bed. Sometimes she heard him in the kitchen at 11 or midnight, the sound of the refrigerator, the brief scrape of a chair, and she told herself she wasn’t listening for it. He was her employer. She was staff. The arrangement was professional, and that was how she wanted it. Except that on a Thursday night in the fifth week, she came downstairs to get water and found him standing at the kitchen island with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the elbows, looking at something on his phone with an expression she’d never seen on him before. Not cold, not controlled, just tired, the kind of tired that doesn’t come from not sleeping enough. He looked up when she came in and straightened slightly, and the expression was gone. “I didn’t realize you were still up,” she said. “I live here.” “I know that.” She went to the cabinet for a glass. “Lara had a good day. She ate almost everything at dinner. Kit said a new word. I think it was ‘more,’ but it might have been ‘floor.’ I wrote it down.”