Nora scrubbed floors with a child growing inside her, almost entirely unnoticed by the people around her.

Nora was still sitting beside Giovanni when Lorenzo returned to room 4B.

She had dozed without meaning to — her head had dropped forward, and she had jerked awake to find the fire still burning and Giovanni watching her with his dark, steady eyes.

She had straightened immediately, embarrassed, and started to apologize.

Giovanni had moved his hand to the arm of the wheelchair and tapped it once.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

*Stay.*

She had stayed.

When the door opened and Lorenzo came in, she rose from the stool.

He looked at her — at the way she braced her hand against the small of her back as she stood, at the careful way she moved — and he said, "Sit down.

Please."

The please surprised her enough that she sat.

Lorenzo pulled a second chair to the other side of his father's wheelchair and sat in it.

For a moment the three of them were simply there together in the warm room, the fire low and steady, the blizzard pressing against the window.

"Mrs.

Gable is gone," Lorenzo said.

Nora looked at him.

"Gone."

"Tonight.

She won't return." He looked at his father.

"I'm sorry it took me this long to come."

Giovanni's eyes moved to his son's face.

Something passed between them — old and complicated and not for Nora to read.

Lorenzo looked back at her.

"The man who left you.

Brody."

Nora went very still.

"What about him?"

"My security team flagged a name in connection with a debt network we've been monitoring in the city.

Brody Callahan.

He owes money to several people, including two men connected to our organization." Lorenzo's voice was careful, measured.

"Is that the same man?"

The fire crackled.

Outside, the wind pressed hard against the glass.

"Yes," Nora said.

"He's in the city.

He has been for the past two weeks." Lorenzo watched her face.

"I thought you should know."

Nora's hands went to her belly — the automatic gesture she made whenever something frightened her.

The baby shifted, a slow roll beneath her palms.

"He knows where I am," she said.

It was not a question.

"He knows you took a position in upstate New York.

He doesn't know the estate." Lorenzo paused.

"But he's been asking."

The room felt different suddenly.

Smaller.

"Why are you telling me this?" Nora asked.

"Because you should be able to make a decision with the correct information." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"And because my father is holding your hand, which in thirty-two years I have never seen him do with anyone he didn't trust completely."

Nora looked at Giovanni.

Giovanni looked back at her with that expression she knew — patient, certain, steady.

"What do you want to do?" Lorenzo asked.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," she said.

"I never did.

That's why I took this position."

"That's not what I asked."

She looked at him.

He was watching her with the same quality of attention his father had — the kind that didn't rush, didn't fill silence with noise, didn't look away.

"I want my daughter to be safe," Nora said.

"That's all I've ever wanted."

Lorenzo nodded slowly.

He stood.

"Then you'll stay.

Your position here is permanent, with proper pay and proper conditions.

You'll have a room in the main wing — not the staff quarters.

And Brody Callahan will not come near this estate."

He said it the way a man states a fact about weather.

Simply.

Without drama.

Nora stared at him.

"You can't just—"

"I can," he said.

"I will." He moved toward the door.

"Get some rest.

I'll have the kitchen send up a proper meal."

He left.

Nora sat in the warm room beside Giovanni and tried to understand what had just happened.

The old man's hand found hers again in the dark, and she held it, and she did not cry — not yet — but her breath came out in a long, unsteady wave that had been building for months.

"He's like you," she whispered to Giovanni.

"Isn't he."