Chapter 1 - The Forty-Eight-Hour Ultimatum
The third nanny ran out of the Mancini estate without her shoes.
Avery Parker watched from the back seat of a rideshare as the woman sprinted through the iron gates in stocking feet, one hand clutching her purse and the other holding what appeared to be half of a torn blouse.
“Keep driving,” the woman screamed at Avery’s driver. “For the love of God, don’t stop here!”
The driver stared at Avery in the mirror, his foot hovering nervously over the brake.
“Ma’am,” he said carefully, “you sure this is your house?”
“It’s not my house.”
“You work here?”
“Hopefully.”
He gave her a look normally reserved for people who admitted they were planning to wrestle an alligator in a phone booth. Then he sighed, shifted into park, and dropped her beside the wet stone pillars of the gate.
Avery stood alone in the cold November rain with one battered suitcase, forty-two dollars in her checking account, an eviction notice folded inside her driver’s license, and a photograph of her six-year-old daughter tucked safely behind her ID card.
She had exactly two days to fix her life, or she and Mia would be living out of the back of a rusted Honda Civic with a blown head gasket.
Behind the massive black iron gates rose a gray stone mansion large enough to have its own weather system.
The Mancini estate.
Everybody in New York seemed to know the name, usually whispered or spoken with a cautious drop in tone. Dante Mancini owned restaurants, construction companies, warehouses, clubs, trucking businesses, and enough legitimate corporations that business magazines occasionally photographed him in expensive three-piece suits and called him an “enigmatic entrepreneur.”
Other people used less polite descriptions. They talked about docks, unions, whispers in dark restaurants, and men who vanished without leaving a forwarding address.
Avery didn’t care which version was true. Right now, she cared about numbers. The nanny agency had advertised a weekly rate that sounded like fairy-tale money to someone whose pantry consisted of half a box of saltines and a jar of generic peanut butter.
She pressed the heavy brass intercom button.
A man’s voice answered, flat and devoid of warmth.
“Name?”
“Avery Parker. I’m here about the childcare position.”
There was a pause, accompanied by the faint rustle of papers over the speaker.
“Aren’t you late?”
Avery checked the cracked screen of her phone. The battery was at twelve percent.
“Three minutes.”
“Mr. Mancini dislikes lateness.”
“My driver refused to come through the gate. I had to walk the last hundred yards in a downpour.”
Another pause.
Then, surprisingly, the man chuckled—a dry, raspy sound.
The heavy buzz of the gate latch echoed across the stone. The iron bars swung inward.
Avery dragged her heavy suitcase up the long, winding driveway through the gray drizzle. The estate was sprawling, surrounded by manicured hedges that looked like they were trimmed with surgical precision. Halfway to the mansion, she saw men in dark jackets stationed beneath stone arches. None wore visible uniforms, but the way they stood—hands resting near their waists, eyes tracking her every movement—left no doubt about their function.
She pretended not to notice, keeping her chin up and her shoulders back, channeling every ounce of the dignity she had left.
At the enormous carved front doors, Avery lifted her hand to knock.
Before her knuckles touched the wood, the door flew open.
Something blue and white sailed directly at her face.
Avery ducked on pure instinct, her training as a former preschool teacher kicking in instantly.
A porcelain vase exploded against the stone column behind her, showering her coat with jagged shards.
Pieces shattered across the polished marble floor inside the foyer.
“I told you to go away!” a child screamed from somewhere above.
Avery slowly straightened up, brushing a speck of white dust off her shoulder.
“Pretty good velocity,” she said loudly into the empty hall.
The boys blinked.
At the top of the grand sweeping staircase stood three identical six-year-old boys. Dark curls tumbled over high foreheads. Matching dark eyes stared down at her with expressions of open hostility.
Leo, Mateo, and Enzo Mancini.
Avery had seen their photographs in the agency file before coming here. The file had not mentioned, however, that they looked like three tiny crime bosses preparing to negotiate her unconditional surrender.
One of them—Mateo, based on the file’s description of a slight scar near his left eyebrow—still had his throwing arm extended in a follow-through pose.
Avery looked down at the broken porcelain fragments at her feet.
“But you pulled your elbow,” she added, her voice conversational.
Silence descended on the vast foyer.
The middle boy frowned, lowering his arm a fraction of an inch.
“What?”
“If you’re going to throw something heavy at somebody, don’t lead with your elbow. It gives away the direction of the toss. Makes it easy to dodge.”
The three brothers stared at her as if she were speaking ancient Greek.
Avery stepped across the threshold, rolling her suitcase past the ruined vase.
“And next time,” she said, glancing up the stairs, “maybe pick something cheaper. Eighteenth-century Satsuma ware is hard to replace on short notice.”
A sound came from somewhere behind her in the shadows of the hallway.
Not quite laughter. More like a sharp exhalation of breath.
She turned sharply.
A man had appeared in the doorway of the library.
Dante Mancini was taller than Avery expected. Maybe six-three, standing with the easy, dangerous grace of a man who knew exactly how much space he occupied and expected everyone else to adjust. Broad shoulders strained slightly beneath the fabric of a charcoal suit. Black hair was touched with gray at the temples, framing a face that might have been classically handsome if it didn’t look permanently carved into granite and disapproval.
He studied Avery with unsettling stillness, his dark eyes taking in her wet boots, her cheap department-store trench coat, and the stubborn tilt of her chin.
Then he looked down at the broken vase scattered across the marble.
“That was actually seventeenth-century porcelain,” Dante said, his voice a deep, resonant baritone that vibrated right through the floorboards.
Avery glanced back up at the stairs, where the three boys were watching their father with wary attention. Then she looked back at Dante.
“Then I formally withdraw my compliment.”
Mateo snorted, a sound he instantly tried to cover up by coughing. Leo elbowed him hard in the ribs.
Dante’s eyes returned to Avery, unreadable.
“You’re the nanny.”
“I’m the applicant. Whether I become the nanny depends on several factors we haven't discussed yet.”
“You ducked.”
“I enjoy having a face. It’s useful for eating and talking.”
His mouth twitched. Almost. It was the microscopic movement of a muscle near the corner of his lip, gone before she could be entirely sure it happened.
“Come with me.”
Dante turned and walked into the library without waiting to see if she followed. Avery didn't hesitate. She left her suitcase by the door and followed the tall, dark silhouette across the expanse of the foyer, her boots clicking softly against the marble.
The library was massive, lined from floor to vaulted ceiling with leather-bound books that smelled of old paper, cedar, and expensive leather. There were no family photographs on the walls or the mahogany tables. That bothered Avery more than the armed guards outside. There were dark wood panels, several locked filing cabinets with heavy brass padlocks, and an enormous executive desk facing tall, rain-streaked windows.
Dante walked behind the desk and sat down, opening a thick manila folder that lay waiting for him.
“Avery Parker,” he read aloud, his voice devoid of inflection. “Thirty-one. Widowed.”
Her stomach tightened, a familiar knot forming behind her ribs.
“Seven years ago,” she said quietly.
“One daughter. Mia. Six years old.”
“Yes.”
“Former preschool teacher.”
“Until the private academy closed its doors due to funding cuts.”
“Then restaurant work, hotel housekeeping, temporary administrative and office jobs.” He flipped a page. “You bounce around a lot.”
“Being poor requires versatility,” Avery replied, her tone sharpening slightly. “When one bridge burns or collapses, you build a raft out of whatever’s lying around.”
His gaze lifted from the paper, pinning her to the spot.
“You have forty-two dollars and sixteen cents in your checking account.”
Avery went entirely still. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“How do you know that?”
“The employment agency I use performs a rigorous financial and background screening on all candidates entering this household.”
“A background check is one thing. Knowing the exact balance of my checking account is an invasion of privacy.”
“In my world, privacy is a luxury, and information is currency,” Dante said smoothly, leaning his forearms on the desk. “You’re desperate.”
Avery hated the word because it was painfully, humiliatingly true. She hated hearing it spoken out loud by a man who probably spent more on a single bottle of wine than she earned in two months of scrubbing hotel bathtubs.
“I’m motivated,” she corrected, her voice low and steady.
“Desperate people lie on applications. They put up with abuse, they steal from the household, or they crack under the pressure within twenty-four hours and run out the front door without their shoes.”
“I’m not most people, Mr. Mancini.”
“So every applicant claims before they meet my sons.”
Dante closed the folder with a soft thud.
“Five nannies quit this month alone,” he continued. “The last one lasted six hours before she broke down crying in the pantry.”
“What happened to her?”
“Mateo locked her in a walk-in linen closet.”
“Accidentally?”
“No.”
“Good to know. At least they have a sense of purpose.”
“Leo filled her expensive leather suitcase with garden worms and potting soil.”
Avery nodded thoughtfully, crossing her arms over her damp coat. “Creative. A bit derivative of classic pranks, but effective for psychological warfare.”
“And Enzo?”
Dante’s expression changed. It was the only time his face softened, even if it was by a fraction of a millimeter.
“Enzo doesn’t usually participate in the pranks.”
That single admission told Avery more about the dynamics of the household than the entire agency file. The quiet ones were always the observers, the architects, or the most deeply hurt.
Dante folded his hands on the desk, the diamond ring on his left pinky catching the amber glow of the desk lamp.
“If you manage to last forty-eight hours in this house,” Dante said slowly, “I will give you six months’ salary up front, in cash or wire transfer, your choice.”
Avery’s heart skipped a beat, then slammed against her ribs.
“Six months?” she echoed, her voice breathless despite her best efforts to keep it steady. “That’s absurd.”
“You need absurd.”
He was right. She did need absurd. The rent for her tiny basement apartment was three months overdue, and the landlord had already left two notes threatening legal action.
“There are conditions,” Dante added, his eyes narrowing slightly. “If you quit before the forty-eight-hour mark—if you run out those doors like the others—you receive nothing. Not a dime. And you walk out into the rain.”
Avery imagined her landlord changing the locks tomorrow morning. She imagined Mia sleeping on Mrs. Cooper’s lumpy sofa two floors downstairs because Avery had told her they were having “a little camping adventure” in the city. She imagined explaining to a six-year-old that they had nowhere to go.
“Forty-eight hours,” Avery said, her voice dropping all hesitation.
Dante nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion.
“Forty-eight hours.”
“But I have conditions, too.”
The genuine surprise on Dante’s face almost made her smile. It was clear that people in his orbit rarely negotiated with him. They took what he offered or they got out of his way.
“You’re negotiating?” he asked, leaning back in his leather chair. “With me?”
“Of course. If we’re going into battle together, Mr. Mancini, I need to know the rules of engagement.”
May you like
Dante studied her for a long, heavy moment, the silence stretching between them until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed the hour with a deep, sonorous boom.
“Name them,” he said quietly.
