Chapter 1
The golf club hit my arm before I could move Leo completely behind me.
The sound was awful.
Heavy.
Dull.
Wrong.
Pain shot from my shoulder to my fingers, but I did not let go of the little boy clinging to my dress.
Leo screamed so hard his tiny body shook.
Victoria stood in front of us in the Beverly Hills living room, both hands wrapped around the club, her beautiful face twisted into something ugly.
All because a two-year-old child had scratched her handbag.
Not ruined it.
Not destroyed it.
Scratched it.
A thin pale line across twenty-five thousand dollars of orange Hermès leather.
I had worked in that house for six months.
David hired me after his first wife, Elena, passed away. He needed help with Leo because business kept dragging him across the country.
David was kind.
Tired.
Grieving.
Trying.
Victoria was perfect when he was home.
She kissed Leo’s forehead.
She smiled for pictures.
She called him “our little angel” online.
But when David left, the mask came off.
She called him a burden.
A mistake.
A reminder of a dead woman.
She locked him in his nursery for hours.
She slapped his small hands when he touched anything expensive.
And every time I tried to tell David, Victoria was already there with a smile and a better story.
“He’s emotional,” she would say.
“Maria is too attached.”
“She doesn’t understand discipline.”
That afternoon, Leo had been walking across the living room with his toy car in one hand.
He stumbled.
The car scraped across Victoria’s bag.
Her face changed instantly.
She grabbed his arm.
He cried before she even hit him.
I ran.
“Don’t touch him.”
Victoria slowly turned to me.
“You stupid maid.”
Then she picked up the golf club beside the fireplace.
I pulled Leo behind me.
She swung.
The club crashed into my upper arm.
I gasped but stayed standing.
Leo wrapped both arms around my leg.
Victoria lifted the club again.
That was when the front door clicked open.
David walked in.
Three days early.
His suitcase was still in his hand.
He saw his wife holding the club.
He saw me shaking.
He saw his son sobbing behind me.
Then his eyes moved to the security camera in the corner.
Still blinking red.
Still recording.
Victoria lowered the club.
May you like
“David,” she whispered.
But his face had already changed.
