The billionaire's fiancée threatened to ruin my brother's future if I didn't let her commit his mother, completely unaware I held the key to her downfall.

“You want to be the hero of a story that doesn’t have one,” Vivian whispered.

She stepped over the shards of broken porcelain, her designer heels clicking sharply against the polished oak floor. She didn’t look at the blood running down my arm where the jagged edge of the lamp had torn through my skin. She looked at Eleanor Valenti, whose breath rattled behind the plastic prongs of her nasal cannula.

“You’re a maid, Sophie,” Vivian said, tilting her head with practiced amusement. “You dust baseboards. You scrub bathtubs after other people have bathed in them. In four days, I become the mistress of this estate. When that happens, your kind doesn’t get a reference letter. Your kind gets escorted off the grounds by armed security.”

My heart hammered against my ribs, so violent I felt it in my teeth. But I didn’t flinch. I stayed between Vivian’s manicured cruelty and the frail old woman sitting in the wheelchair behind me.

“I know what my job is, Miss Cross,” I said, keeping my voice steady through the tremor in my chest. “And right now, my job is ensuring Mrs. Valenti survives until her son returns.”

Vivian’s smile thinned into a razor’s edge. “Adrian doesn’t care about the details. Adrian cares about results. And the result is that the Valenti family trust will have my name on the governing board by five o'clock tomorrow.”

“He will care about this,” Eleanor gasped from behind me. Her voice was cracked, raw, but laced with iron that decades of wealth and quiet power had forged. “He will tear your life into kindling, Vivian. You don’t know him. You only know his checkbook.”

Vivian turned her icy blue gaze back to the old woman. “Your son is sitting in a boardroom in Zurich, Eleanor. He thinks I am downstairs arranging white hydrangeas and tasting lemon-blackberry chiffon. He thinks his frail mother is resting comfortably under the care of the finest private nurse money can buy.”

She reached down, snatched the cream leather folder off the bed spread, and tucked it beneath her arm.

“Dr. Sterling has already drafted the assessment,” Vivian added, her voice dropping into a sing-song cadence that made my blood run cold. “Early-onset vascular dementia. Agitation. Hallucinations. If you don’t sign the trust amendment voluntarily, the court will appoint me as your temporary conservator on Monday morning. Adrian will be married to me, the ink will be dry, and you will be transferred to a private sanitarium in upstate New York where the walls are padded and visitors are strictly scheduled.”

“You’re a monster,” I whispered.

Vivian turned on her heel to face me. The mask dropped entirely. Her jaw set hard, the tendons in her pale throat standing out.

“Clean up this mess, Sophie. Bandage your arm. If a single drop of your filthy blood touches that Persian rug, I’ll deduct the cleaning fee from your final severance check. And if you speak a word of this to Rachel, to the staff, or to the gate guards, remember this: your younger brother’s scholarship at St. Jude’s Academy is funded by the Valenti Foundation. One phone call from me, and he’s out on the street with nowhere to go.”

The breath left my lungs in a sickening rush. She had researched me. She had dug into my life, found the one person I would bleed for, and placed her boot directly over his future.

“Do you understand me?” she hissed.

I clenched my fists at my sides, feeling the warm, sticky trail of blood drip from my wrist onto the floorboards.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said through clenched teeth.

Vivian smirked, smoothed her tailored lavender blazer, and walked out of the bedroom. Her heels faded down the marble corridor, accompanied by the muffled murmur of the two junior maids who had witnessed everything and were already retreating into the shadows to protect their own livelihoods.

The heavy silence of the bedroom settled over us like dust.

I collapsed onto my knees, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I looked down at my hands. They were shaking uncontrollably. But behind me, a dry, withered hand settled onto my shoulder.

Eleanor was leaning forward, her oxygen tube hissing softly. Her eyes were sunken, dark with exhaustion, but they burned with an ancient, unyielding fire.

“Get the medicine, child,” Eleanor whispered, her fingers digging into the fabric of my apron with surprising strength. “Under the floorboard beneath the armoire. Don’t let her see you take it. And then, Sophie… you must find my son before the sun sets tomorrow.”

I looked at the floorboard she was pointing toward, then back into Eleanor’s pale face.

Four days until the wedding.

Adrian was three thousand miles away.