“Marisol, we need to talk,” Andrew said.
She wiped her hands on her apron, her gaze dropping to the floor. “Mr. Hawthorne, I should have called you immediately last night. But the landlines… they were cut.”
Andrew’s blood ran cold. “Cut?”
“Victoria didn’t just leave, sir. She let them in.”
Before Andrew could process the horrifying weight of her words, Marisol swayed. Her knees buckled. Andrew lunged, catching her just as she hit the hardwood floor. As she fell, her sweater sleeve pushed up, revealing a jagged, hastily bandaged laceration and a dark, vicious bruise she had been hiding all morning.
Victoria wasn’t a negligent nanny. She was an inside woman for a kidnapping ring. The “late-night visitors” were mercenaries who had come for his heirs.
And a housekeeper had fought them off.
Suddenly, tiny footsteps echoed down the hall. The twins—wearing their oversized red and yellow fleece pajamas—ran into the room. Seeing their protector on the floor, they didn’t panic. Exhausted and traumatized by the night’s unseen horrors, they simply curled up directly on her chest and stomach, burying their faces in her shirt, refusing to let go of the woman who had barricaded their door with her own body.
Marisol’s eyes fluttered shut, the adrenaline finally wearing off, pulling her into a deep, unconscious state.
Andrew dropped to his knees beside her, his tailored navy suit wrinkling against the floorboards. He gently placed his right hand on her forehead, brushing back her hair. Looking at the bleeding woman and his sleeping children, a soul-crushing wave of guilt washed over him.
“She stayed,” Andrew whispered, his voice trembling with remorse as he leaned in close. “When I should have been the one here.”
He pulled his phone out, his eyes hardening into ice. “Send the paramedics,” he ordered his security chief. “Then hunt down Victoria Langford.”