Chapter 1: The Fourteenth Nanny
By the time the fourteenth nanny ran crying to the private elevator, the marble floor of the Duca penthouse was already glittering with broken crystal.
“I can’t do this anymore, Mr. Duca,” she said, breathless and shaking. “He is not a child. He is a little monster.”
Her beige uniform was streaked with mashed peas. A dark bruise was already rising on her shin. She had the polished manners and crisp posture of a woman trained for royal households, but now her mascara had smudged, and one hand kept trembling around the strap of her designer tote.
Matteo Duca stood near the wall of glass overlooking the Hudson, one hand in his pocket, the other hanging still at his side. He was dressed in a dark tailored suit that fit him like it had been stitched into place. The city moved below him in glittering lines, yellow cabs, and late-afternoon horns, but inside the penthouse, the air felt dead and heavy.
“Your severance will be wired by noon,” he said. His voice was low, flat, and controlled. “My driver is downstairs. You’ll take the service route out.”
“Sir, I—”
“Do not discuss this household when you leave.”
The brass doors closed on her pale, stricken face. Then, the silence broke again. A shriek came from farther down the west hallway, followed by the sharp crack of something hard hitting a wall. Matteo closed his eyes.
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His son was three years old. He had not spoken a word in almost two years, ever since his mother had died in a car explosion on FDR Drive. The doctors called it trauma. The child specialists called it dysregulation. But to the world, Leo was a feral, unreachable storm.
There were men in New York who would not say Matteo Duca’s name above a whisper. Judges owed him favors. Rivals had vanished after underestimating him. And still, nothing he owned, threatened, paid for, or controlled had been enough to reach the little boy behind those locked, furious eyes.
