The drive to the outskirts of Toronto felt like a descent into a frozen purgatory. As the taxi climbed the winding, salt-crusted roads of the Bridle Path, the city's skyline vanished, replaced by towering iron gates and ancient, skeletal maples draped in heavy Canadian snow.
The Slein Manor was not a home; it was a fortress of glass and charcoal stone. It loomed against the grey morning sky, a masterpiece of modern architecture that felt as hospitable as an iceberg.
Avana stood at the threshold, her cheap boots soaking through with slush. She clutched the straps of her backpack—the same one that had held the "stolen" watch only hours before—and pressed the brass buzzer.
The door didn't just open; it swung wide with a silent, heavy authority.
Standing there was Francis Slein. In the morning light, he looked even more lethal. He wasn't wearing the suit from the office; he wore a black turtleneck of fine cashmere that emphasized the hard lines of his shoulders. His face was a mask of aristocratic boredom.
"You're four minutes early," he said. His voice was like a low-frequency hum that vibrated in her teeth.
"I... I didn't want to be late, Mr. Slein," Avana stammered, her breath blooming in a white cloud between them.
"Punctuality is not a virtue here, Dermis. It is a requirement." He stepped aside, his gaze never leaving her face. As she brushed past him into the foyer, the heat of the house hit her, but it brought no comfort. The interior was minimalist and freezing in its aesthetic—polished concrete floors, vast white walls, and a silence so thick it felt like a physical weight.
"Follow me," he commanded.
He walked with a predatory grace, his footsteps echoing through the hollow grandeur of the house. Avana hurried behind him, her eyes darting to the expensive art on the walls. She wanted to ask him how he knew her name last night. She wanted to ask why he had looked at her blueprints. But every time she opened her mouth, the icy stillness of his posture silenced her. He didn't look back. He didn't offer to take her bag. He treated her like a piece of furniture he had recently acquired at an auction.
"This is the West Wing," Francis said, stopping before a set of reinforced oak doors. "My children, Leo and Mia, live here. They do not like strangers. They do not like noise. And they certainly do not like authority."
"Mr. Slein," Avana whispered, "I've never been a nanny. I don't know why you chose me for this."
Francis turned, his icy blue eyes pinning her to the spot. For a moment, the mask slipped, and she saw a flash of that dark, suffocating intensity from the office.
"I chose you because you have no other choice," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous silkiness. "I don't need a professional. I need someone who cannot afford to fail. Now, go in."
The nursery was a cavernous room filled with the most expensive toys money could buy, yet it felt like a graveyard. Most of the dolls were decapitated; the high-end train sets were smashed into plastic shards.
In the center of the room sat two children.
Leo, who looked about seven, was hunched over a tablet, his face pale and his eyes shadowed with a grief too heavy for a child. Mia, perhaps five, was sitting in a corner, methodically shredding a silk pillow with a pair of safety scissors.
They didn't look up when the door opened.
"This is Avana," Francis said, his voice devoid of any fatherly warmth. He didn't step into the room; he stood at the threshold, an observer to his own children's misery. "She is staying. If she leaves, it will be because you broke her, or because I grew bored of her. Do not make me regret bringing her here."
Leo looked up then. His eyes were carbon copies of his father's—cold, blue, and ancient. He looked at Avana's worn sneakers, then at her trembling hands.
"She smells like the subway," Leo said flatly.
"She looks like she's going to cry," Mia added, her scissors snicking through the silk with a rhythmic snip-snip.
Avana felt a surge of pity so sharp it overrode her fear. These weren't "wild" children; they were abandoned hearts living in a museum of their father's grief. She took a step forward, kneeling so she was at their level.
"I do smell like the subway," Avana said softly, ignoring the sharp look Francis gave her from the doorway. "It's a long ride from where I live. But I also know how to build a skyscraper out of those sugar cubes on your table. Would you like to see?"
Mia paused her shredding. Leo's thumb hovered over his tablet.
"Enough," Francis's voice cut through the air like a guillotine. "I do not pay you to play, Dermis. I pay you to manage. Their schedule is on the desk. You will follow it to the second."
a realization that sent a shudder through her soul. He wasn't just her employer. He wasn't just a man who had caught her with a stolen watch.
"Go to work," Francis commanded, his gaze lingering on her for a fraction of a second too long before he turned on his heel and vanished into the shadows of the hallway.
Avana stood in the center of the room, trapped between two broken children and a man who was weaving a web around her life, thread by agonizing thread. She looked at the address on the stationery in her pocket, then at the heavy doors that had just shut.
She looked at the heavy doors that had just shut, hearing the distant, muffled click of a deadbolt sliding into place somewhere in the depths of the mansion. The sound was a period at the end of a sentence she hadn't finished writing.
After leaving Avana in the wreckage of the nursery, Francis Slein retreated to his private study—a room located in the highest spire of the manor, accessible only by a biometric elevator. The walls here were lined with monitors, a silent nerve center that kept the world, and his household, under his thumb.