Chapter 2 - The Forbidden Nursery
The first two days in the Kwon mansion were a blur of dust cloths, commercial vacuums, and endless marble hallways.
Maya worked with the quiet efficiency of a woman whose survival depended on it. She polished silver, scrubbed brass fixtures until they shone like gold, and avoided eye contact with the high-priced security guards stationed near the main foyer.
From her third-floor window, she occasionally caught a glimpse of Evan Kwon stepping into his black Escalade surrounded by bodyguards—a tall, imposing figure in a charcoal suit whose mere presence seemed to drop the temperature in the courtyard.
She kept her distance. She wanted no trouble.
Then came the third morning.
Maya had left Lily playing quietly with a set of plastic stacking blocks in the corner of the staff lounge while she ran down to grab a fresh bucket of cleaning supplies from the ground-floor pantry.
It took three minutes.
Three minutes was all it took for Lily to decide that the world outside the lounge looked far more interesting than plastic blocks.
Pushing a small wooden step stool across the floor, Lily had climbed up, unlatched the heavy staff wing door, and waddled out into the carpeted hallway. Her bright pink sneakers squeaked softly against the floor as she explored the grand estate.
She turned a corner, passed a row of closed mahogany doors, and stopped in front of a pair of heavy white double doors guarded by a digital keypad and a small brass plaque that read: NORTH WING - PRIVATE.
The door wasn't fully latched. A gentle breeze from the hallway had left it cracked open by a few inches.
From inside came a sound that had terrorized twelve professional nannies, multiple doctors, and a team of security guards.
WAAAAAH!
It was a duet of pure, unadulterated fury. Caleb and Connor Kwon, fourteen months old, were in the middle of their morning meltdown. Oatmeal coated the wallpaper. A plastic bottle lay shattered on the rug. The twin boys were screaming with such red-faced intensity that their tiny fists were clenched and trembling.
Lily stopped. She blinked her big brown eyes, tilted her head to the side, and listened to the chaos.
Most two-year-olds would have cried and run back to their mothers.
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Lily, however, was built differently.
She pushed the white door open with both hands, stepping right past the threshold and into the most feared room in the state of Illinois.
