This job offered everything. A salary larger than anything she’d ever earned. Benefits. Private living quarters for her and Lucia.
All she had to do was survive four children no one else could control.
Inside, a middle-aged woman in a charcoal housekeeper’s uniform looked her up and down.
“You’re the replacement,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Chen.”
She glanced toward the driveway where the last nanny had vanished.
“She lasted three hours. Better than the one before her.”
“How long did that one last?”
“Forty-seven minutes.”
Mrs. Chen opened the kitchen door and whispered, “God be with you. The official test begins at dinner, assuming you remain until then.”
The kitchen looked like a hurricane had hit during breakfast.
Orange juice across the floor. Cereal falling like confetti from the crystal lights. Butter smeared across the cabinets where a blond boy in red pajamas was sliding from wall to wall.
One boy stood on the island holding an empty juice carton like a trophy.
Another had built a fortress under the table out of cereal boxes and silver tape.
And leaning against the far counter, holding a glass of red wine, stood Vittorio Rinaldi.
Younger than she expected. Perhaps thirty-eight. Tall. Dark-haired. Immaculately dressed.
He looked exhausted. Not weak. Just defeated in the one room where his power meant nothing.
“You’re the new one,” he said.
“It appears so.”
“I don’t care about your résumé.”
“That saves time.”
He lifted his wineglass toward the ruins.
“Get all four boys seated at that table and eating real food before eight o’clock. If you succeed, the position is yours.”
Serena glanced at the clock.
6:47.
Seventy-three minutes.
A boy crawled out from under the table. Marco.
“You should go now,” he told her. “You seem nice.”
“That’s usually considered a positive quality.”
“Not here,” he said, and his smile vanished. “The nice ones cry the hardest.”
Then the blond boy picked up the apple and threw it at her head.
