Chapter 1: The Bead That Landed Beside Leo's Crib
Rain struck the nursery windows hard enough to blur the grounds beyond them. At 2:04 AM, I knelt beside the mahogany crib with Leo limp against my forearm, his pale skin changing color by the second. His mouth was open around the penlight clenched between my teeth, and the metal forceps waited in my right hand. Then Alessio Romano came through the doorway with rain darkening his shirt and a loaded pistol raised at my head.
“Get away from him!”
The barrel pressed against my temple. I could smell wet cedar on him beneath the storm air. His hand shook, but the weapon did not leave its line. Leo made no sound. His small chest moved badly, each breath thinner than the one before. Alessio saw the forceps near the baby's mouth and mistook the emergency for its cause. I kept my eyes on Leo and guided the tips past his tongue.
I was the nanny, and that night my entire job narrowed to keeping one infant alive.
The forceps touched something hard.
I held Leo's jaw steady with two fingers and angled the penlight deeper. The object was lodged low in his throat, too smooth to catch with my fingers and too large to ignore. I closed the forceps around it. Alessio's breathing filled the space behind me, fast and controlled in the way of someone trying not to pull a trigger.
The bead resisted once.
Then it came free.
It dropped onto the Persian rug with a wet click.
For half a second, Leo did not move. The bead rested beside the crib, pea-sized and blue beneath the harsh white light. A faint groove crossed its enamel like a tool had been dragged over the center. Black residue clung to one edge. I saw the marks before I saw Alessio lower the pistol.
I shifted Leo against my chest and watched for the next breath. His skin remained pale, but the blue at his mouth began to recede. The change was small enough that fear still held me in place. I did not trust it. I did not trust the room, the clip hanging from the changing table, or the green light beneath the nursery camera above the door.
The evidence had landed where anyone could have stepped on it.
I reached for a breast-milk storage bag on the changing table. My hands were wet from the rainwater on the rug and from Leo's saliva, so I pulled the bag inside out over my hand. Alessio stayed near the doorway, pistol angled toward the floor but still in his grip. He watched me turn the plastic over the bead, pinch it through the bag, and reverse the material until the blue enamel was sealed inside without touching my skin.
“It came from his pacified clip.”
The pacifier clip lay where it had been left, its beads catching the overhead light. Some matched the recovered bead's color, but not its exact shape or finish. I did not touch it. The black residue remained visible through the clear plastic, and the groove remained visible too. Those details were all I had, and I knew how quickly details disappeared once frightened people began moving objects.
Leo coughed once against my shoulder.
His body jerked, then went slack again. I bent over him, checking his breathing while keeping the sealed bag away from his sleeper. Alessio's attention moved from Leo to the bead, then to the camera. The green indicator continued to glow beneath the lens. It proved only that something there had power. It did not prove the room had been recorded.
I looked directly at it.
May you like
“No. Lock the room, someone tried to kill him.”
The words settled between us with the rain. Alessio reached back toward the door. The latch began to move. Leo was still in my arms, the bead was sealed, and the pistol remained inside the nursery with us as the lock started to turn.
