Chapter 2 - The Forbidden Wing
By her third night at the Vance estate, Elena had mapped the sprawling rhythm of the mansion.
It was a ghost ship. During the day, elite security guards patrolled the perimeter, private chefs moved like phantoms through the commercial-grade kitchen, and Mr. Thorne operated with the quiet stealth of a clockmaker. But at night, the house belonged to the sound.
The screaming.
It wasn't normal infant crying. It was a piercing, raw, rhythmic shriek that seemed to vibrate through the steel-reinforced framing of the mansion. It echoed from the east wing—the forbidden zone where Leo and Lucas Vance waged their nightly war against the universe.
Elena was down on her knees in the second-floor gallery, meticulously polishing a streak of sea salt off a floor-to-ceiling glass panel, when the crying reached a crescendo.
A sharp crash echoed down the corridor, followed by a woman’s frantic sob. A temporary night nurse—hire number fifteen, though Elena didn't yet know the exact tally—bolted out of the east-floor double doors, dragging a suitcase behind her with wild, terrified eyes. She didn't even say goodbye to Thorne; she simply smashed the emergency exit bar and ran out into the courtyard.
Elena sighed, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist. She stood up, grabbed her mop bucket, and walked down the deserted hallway toward the east wing.
She wasn't supposed to be there. Thorne’s orders had been absolute. But as she approached the heavy oak doors, she noticed something that offended her professional sensibilities: a large, ugly splatter of pureed green peas smeared across the minimalist gray baseboards, drying rapidly under the forced-air vents.
“Animals,” Elena muttered under her breath, shaking her head.
She pushed the east wing doors open.
The nursery was massive—a modernist nightmare of brushed steel cribs, minimalist white furniture, and gray soundproofing panels. It looked more like a high-security holding cell than a room for babies.
In the center of the room stood two cribs.
Inside them, two fifteen-month-old toddlers were screaming their lungs out, faces purple, fists clenched, tears streaming down their chubby cheeks.
Elena paused. She looked at the green peas on the baseboard, then at the scattered stuffed animals, and finally at the two exhausted, furious little boys.
She didn't approach them with the cloying, high-pitched baby talk that nannies always used. She didn't reach for a rattle or pull out a tablet playing soothing Mozart.
Instead, Elena walked over to the supply cart she had left in the hallway, grabbed a warm microfiber cloth and a bottle of mild, citrus-scented vinegar cleaner, and walked right past the cribs.
She got down on her hands and knees directly beneath Leo’s crib and began scrubbing the dried peas off the baseboard with brisk, rhythmic strokes.
Squeak. Rub. Wipe.
The sudden shift in energy startled the twins.
Leo stopped mid-shriek, his mouth hanging open in a wet O. Lucas, echoing his brother’s instincts, choked off his wail and blinked hard, his gray eyes fixing on the strange woman crawling around their floor.
Elena didn't look up. She kept scrubbing.
“You know, that’s a terrible waste of vegetables,” Elena muttered aloud to the baseboard, her voice dry and conversational. “My son Toby hates broccoli, but if I threw a bowl of it at the wall, my grandmother would have used a wooden spoon on my backside before I hit the floor.”
Leo leaned over the wooden railing of his crib, his tiny forehead furrowed in deep suspicion. He let out a tentative, experimental whine.
“Na-a-ah!”
“Ah-ah,” Elena clicked her tongue, turning her head slightly to look up at him through her taped glasses. “Don't start that up again. My knees are already sore from cleaning up your mess. If you want to yell, at least have the decency to yell in tune.”
She resumed wiping the baseboard.
Up in the third-floor study, Julian Vance froze.
He had been reviewing a multi-million-dollar tech acquisition, his fingers poised over his keyboard, when the audio feed from the nursery picked up the sound of a woman’s voice speaking in a normal, unpanicked tone.
Julian’s eyes snapped to the security monitor.
On the screen, a woman in a gray cardigan was scrubbing the wall while two red-faced toddlers stared down at her like she was an alien life form.
Julian’s breath caught in his throat.
May you like
The screaming had stopped.
For the first time in eighteen months, the east wing was quiet.
