CHAP 4 — Please Don’t Leave Us
Mason reached me first.
The same boy who had launched peas like cannon fire now dropped to his knees in front of my chair, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“Please don’t leave us, Ms. Brooks,” he sobbed. “We’ll be good, we promise.”
Noah grabbed my torn sweater and cried into it.
Oliver held onto the chair leg he had tried to unscrew an hour earlier.
Theo pressed his forehead against my knee and shook without sound.
Four little wars became four terrified children.
Victor stood in the dining room doorway with both hands in his pockets, staring as if he had never seen his sons before.
Slowly, he removed his hands.
“In fourteen months,” he whispered, “I have never seen them look at anyone like this.”
I looked down at the boys.
Then up at him.
“That is not a compliment to me, Mr. Ralston.”
His face tightened.
“No.”
“It means they have been begging in a language nobody here understood.”
Mrs. Alvarez covered her mouth.
Victor stepped forward once, then stopped as all four boys tensed.
That stopped him more effectively than any accusation I could make.
His children expected his approach to mean correction, not comfort.
He saw it.
For the first time, I think he truly saw it.
Mason cried harder.
“We’ll eat chicken. We won’t throw peas. I won’t call you stupid. Noah won’t climb the chandelier.”
“I only did that once,” Noah sobbed.
Oliver whispered, “I’ll put the screws back.”
Theo finally spoke.
“Don’t go like Mommy.”
The room broke.
Victor’s face drained of color.
I placed one hand gently on Theo’s head.
“I can’t be your mommy.”
He nodded against my knee.
“I know.”
“I can be Hannah.”
He clutched tighter.
“Don’t let them take us away.”
Victor’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
All four boys went silent.
I felt the shift immediately.
This was not only grief.
This was fear with a source.
“Who said someone was taking you away?” I asked.
Mason wiped his face with his sleeve.
“Grandmother.”
Victor’s expression changed.
“My mother?”
Noah nodded.
“She said Dad was giving up. That if we didn’t become normal, we’d go to the school in Switzerland where boys don’t come home until summer.”
Oliver added, “She said nannies leave because bad children deserve strangers.”
Theo whispered, “She said Mom would be ashamed.”
Victor looked like he had been struck.
“When?”
“After Mrs. Alvarez goes to bed,” Mason said.
Mrs. Alvarez stiffened.
“She told me not to bother you,” Noah said. “She said Dad has important work and doesn’t need more disappointment.”
Victor sat down as if his legs had failed.
I watched him carefully.
Some men turn pain into rage at the nearest person. Victor did not. He looked at his sons with a horror that seemed to hollow him out from the inside.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
Mason’s face twisted.
“You never know.”
That sentence landed harder than shouting.
Victor closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they were wet.
“You’re right.”
The boys stared.
I did too.
Powerful men rarely choose those words quickly.
Victor looked at me.
“My mother called the behavioral consultants. She wanted boarding school. I refused. I thought that was enough.”
“It wasn’t,” I said.
“No.”
He stood, walked to the mahogany table, and pulled another document from his jacket.
Not the first employment contract.
A blank letter of authority.
He placed it in front of me with a sleek black pen.
“Name your price, Hannah. You have absolute authority over this entire estate.”
I looked at him.
“Do you understand what absolute means?”
“I’m beginning to.”
“My son comes with me. He is not treated as charity. He is not hidden. He is not beneath your children.”
“Agreed.”
“Your mother does not enter the children’s wing without my approval.”
His jaw tightened.
“Agreed.”
“You attend dinner every night you are in this house. No phone at the table.”
He hesitated.
All four boys watched.
Then he nodded.
“Agreed.”
“And you stop outsourcing fatherhood to contracts.”
Victor looked at the boys on the floor.
Then back at me.
May you like
“Agreed.”
Only then did I pick up the pen.
