For weeks, no one had been able to calm his nine-month-old son. Doctors had examined Nico until the nursery smelled permanently of antiseptic, nurses had rotated through the mansion in exhausted shifts, and specialists had offered explanations that sounded increasingly desperate. None of them had answers for why the child screamed until his voice became raw, slept in fragments, and startled whenever certain people entered the room.
Matteo had spent years building a reputation that made powerful men lower their voices when his name was mentioned. Newspapers called him ruthless. Prosecutors called him untouchable. Rivals called him only when they had no other choice. But none of that mattered at four in the morning when his son twisted in his arms and cried as though something invisible was hurting him.
That morning, Matteo stood beneath a chandelier in the mansion’s enormous foyer with his shirt half untucked, his sleeves rolled unevenly, and two days of stubble darkening his jaw. The polished marble beneath his shoes reflected a man who looked less like the feared head of the Varric organization and more like a father who had not slept properly in months.
He bounced Nico carefully against his chest, trying every motion the nurses had shown him. The baby’s fists clenched in the fabric of Matteo’s white shirt as another sob shook his small body.
Matteo lowered his voice. “Come on, Nico. Please. Just breathe.”
One of the guards standing near the staircase glanced toward the other but said nothing. Everyone in the house had learned that the worst thing they could do when Nico was crying was offer Matteo advice. Too many people already had.
Across the foyer, Liana Graves stood frozen beside the linens she had dropped.
She had started work at the estate less than three hours earlier.
The housekeeper had given her a red uniform, shown her the staff corridors, explained which rooms were private, and warned her not to speak unless spoken to when senior members of the household were present. Liana had nodded through every instruction because she needed the job badly enough to obey almost anything.
Twenty-two days earlier, she had buried her own baby.
She still counted the days without meaning to.
Twenty-two mornings since she had awakened with her arms reaching toward an empty bassinet. Twenty-two nights since she had stood beneath cold gray skies beside a grave far too small and watched dark soil fall onto the tiny white casket below. Twenty-two days since people had begun telling her that time would eventually make breathing easier.
Time had done nothing of the kind.
Rent was due. Her savings were nearly gone. Grief, she had discovered, did not stop utility bills from arriving or landlords from knocking. So when the Varric estate advertised for additional domestic staff, Liana had taken the first position offered to her.
She had told herself the work would help.
Scrubbing floors meant she had to move. Folding linens meant she had to count. Polishing silver meant she had to concentrate on something other than the quiet apartment waiting for her at the end of each shift.
She had not known there was a baby in the house.
And she had not been prepared for the sound of one crying.
Nico released another broken wail, and Liana felt the noise travel straight through her chest.
For a moment she was no longer standing in a mansion. She was in a hospital room again, holding her own child while a machine beside the bed counted seconds she would later wish she could reclaim. Her fingers tightened around nothing.
Then Nico cried again.
Liana moved.
She left the fallen linens where they were and crossed the marble floor quickly.
One of Matteo’s guards stepped into her path, raising one hand.
“Stop.”
Liana barely seemed to hear him. Her gaze remained fixed on the baby.
Matteo turned sharply. “Who are you?”
She stopped a few feet away, suddenly aware of the guards, the enormous house, and the fact that she had been employed there for less than one morning.
“Liana,” she said, breathing hard. “The new maid.”
Matteo studied her with exhausted suspicion.
“You’re not assigned to the nursery.”
“I know.”
Nico’s crying intensified. He turned his face against Matteo’s chest and kicked one foot beneath the soft cream blanket wrapped around him.
Liana’s expression tightened.
“Please.”
Matteo’s eyes hardened. “Please what?”
She raised both arms before she had time to think about how strange the gesture must have looked.
It was not professional. It was not careful. It was simply instinct.
The instinct of a mother whose body still remembered the shape of a child it no longer carried.
“Let me hold him.”
The foyer changed.
The nearest guard glanced toward Matteo. The other shifted his weight almost imperceptibly.
Matteo stared at Liana as though she had crossed an invisible line.
“No.”
The answer should have ended it.
Liana knew that. She should have lowered her arms, apologized, gathered the linens from the floor, and disappeared into the service corridor before someone decided she had already lost the job she desperately needed.
She almost did.
Then Nico turned.
His tear-soaked face lifted from Matteo’s chest, and for the first time since Liana had entered the foyer, his screaming faltered.
The baby stared at her.
Liana went still.
So did Matteo.
Nico’s lower lip trembled. He released a smaller, uncertain sound and stretched one hand toward Liana.
Then the other.
Matteo looked down at him.
“Nico?”
