Chapter 1 - THE ONE THING SHE SHOULD NEVER HAVE SAID
“You’re way too handsome to be alone,” my six-year-old daughter told the most feared mafia boss in New York. “I think you should be my daddy.”
Every armed man in Adrian Kane’s study went silent.
I nearly dropped the tray in my hands.
My name is Emma Walsh, and until that morning, I had managed to survive eleven months working as a maid in Adrian Kane’s Manhattan mansion by following three rules.
Work hard.
Keep my eyes down.
Never give Mr. Kane a reason to remember my name.
Then my babysitter called in sick.
With my mother hundreds of miles away and no one else I trusted, I brought Mia to work and hid her in the servants’ room with crackers, cartoons, and strict instructions not to wander.
For almost two hours, she listened.
Then I was sent to prepare the west dining room.
When I returned, Mia was gone.
I searched the kitchen and servants’ hallway before hearing something so strange I actually stopped walking.
Adrian Kane was laughing.
I followed the sound to his private study.
Mia stood directly in front of him, clutching her stuffed elephant while two armed guards watched in disbelief.
Adrian had crouched to her level.
“You’re very handsome,” Mia informed him. “And tall.”
“I’ve been told worse.”
“So you should be my daddy.”
“Mia!”
She turned happily.
“Mommy! I found your boss.”
I hurried toward her, already imagining myself unemployed by lunchtime.
But Adrian didn’t order us out.
Instead, he looked at Mia.
“Why do you think your mother needs me to be your daddy?”
Mia’s smile faded.
“Because Mommy thinks I’m asleep when she cries.”
I couldn’t breathe.
There were things about my past I had spent six years burying. Things even Mia didn’t fully understand.
Adrian’s expression changed.
Then my daughter hugged her elephant tighter and whispered, “And because my real daddy had the same lion on his watch as you.”
Adrian went completely still.
His eyes dropped to the antique silver watch on his wrist.
A tiny lion was engraved beneath the crown.
Then he looked at me.
Not with anger.
With shock.
“Emma,” he said quietly, “where did Mia see that watch?”
My heart began pounding.
Because Adrian Kane had never called me Emma before.
And because the answer was locked inside a small wooden box beneath my bed.
May you like
A box containing the last photograph ever taken of Mia’s father.
And the broken silver watch that had been returned to me after his death.
