The previous nanny ran out of the mansion wearing only one shoe.

By seven fifteen, the kitchen had transformed.

The smell of cooking pork had drawn the boys in like a magnetic pull. Even Marco had crawled out from his fortress beneath the table, his roll of silver tape forgotten as he watched the thick yellow ribbons of rigatoni drop into the boiling water.

Leo was standing on the plastic stool, his small hands carefully rotating the metal grater against the Pecorino Romano. He was incredibly precise for a six-year-old, his dark curls falling forward as he worked. Every few seconds, he would look up at Serena to make sure he was doing it right.

“Perfect, Leo,” Serena said, whisking four egg yolks with a whole egg in a glass bowl. “The cheese needs to be as fine as snow. That way, when we mix it with the warm pasta water, it creates a cream, not lumps. If it lumps, we’ve made scrambled eggs, and we’ll have to start over.”

“We’re not making scrambled eggs,” Nico said, standing beside her with his arms crossed. He had refused to cut the pancetta, but he had spent the last ten minutes watching her every move, his eyes tracking the skillet with a fierce intensity. “My dad likes his eggs runny. He says people who overcook their meat are cowards.”

“Your father is right about that,” Serena said, tossing the pasta with a wooden spoon. “But cooking is about timing, Nico. If you’re too fast, the pasta is hard. If you’re too slow, it’s mush. You have to wait for the exact moment when the water is starched and the pork is crisp.”

She looked at Vittorio, who had moved from the counter to the doorway. He was watching his sons.

It was clear he hadn't seen them like this in a very long time.

For the past year, since his wife’s death, the Rinaldi home had been a war zone. Serena had read the news articles during her late-night research—the tragic car accident on the West Side Highway, the sudden loss of Clara Rinaldi, the subsequent withdrawal of her husband from public life. The papers had painted him as a grieving titan, but they hadn't mentioned the four children left behind in the wreckage of his grief.

These boys weren't wild because they were bad. They were wild because they were trying to see if anyone cared enough to stop them. They were testing the boundaries of a world that had suddenly lost its center.

“The table is ready,” Mrs. Chen announced, her voice slightly startled as she looked at the clean, set table in the breakfast nook. She had laid out four simple white plates, glasses of water, and a basket of crusty bread she had warmed in the oven.

“Sit down,” Serena said, not looking back as she lifted the heavy pot of boiling pasta toward the sink to drain it.

“We don't sit until Dad sits,” the fourth boy—the one named Luca, who had been quiet since his juice-carton victory—said. He looked at Vittorio with a strange, defensive loyalty.

Serena turned, the steam from the pasta pot rising around her like a veil. She looked at Vittorio.

“Mr. Rinaldi,” she said. “The kitchen is clean. The dinner is ready. Are you going to join us, or are you going to watch your sons eat from the hallway?”

Vittorio’s eyes darkened. A shadow of his official persona—the man who could empty a restaurant with his presence—flickered across his features. He was not a man who took suggestions from his employees. He was a man who gave orders.

But then he looked at Leo, who was holding the bowl of grated cheese like a sacred offering, his eyes wide with a quiet, desperate hope.

Vittorio walked to the table and pulled out the heavy oak chair at the head.

“Sit,” he said to his sons.

The boys scrambled into their seats. There was no pushing, no fighting, no thrown food. The sheer novelty of their father sitting at the table with them on a Thursday night seemed to have paralyzed their desire for chaos.

Serena carried the massive bowl of carbonara to the center of the table. The sauce was glossy, sticking to the rigatoni in a perfect, creamy emulsion, dotted with the dark, crisp bits of pancetta and cracked black pepper.

She set it down, picked up her wet blazer from the chair, and checked the clock.

Seven forty-two.

Eighteen minutes to spare.

“You’re not staying?” Vittorio asked, his voice low as he looked at her coat.

“My seventy-three minutes are up, Mr. Rinaldi,” Serena said, her voice professional, though her heart was pounding against her ribs. “The boys are seated. They are eating real food. The kitchen is clean. I have a daughter waiting for me at a neighbor’s apartment, and I need to know if I have the job before I make the drive back to Queens.”

Vittorio looked at his sons, who had already begun to pile the pasta onto their plates. Even Nico was eating with a quiet, focused hunger, his face covered in sauce.

Then he looked at Serena.

“The driver will bring your daughter and your things tomorrow morning at nine,” he said. “Your salary begins tonight. Mrs. Chen will show you to your quarters.”

Serena closed her eyes for a brief second, a wave of relief so intense it made her dizzy washing over her.

Two weeks.

She had two weeks to show the court that she had a stable home, a high-paying job, and a safe place for Lucia to grow up.