Chapter 9
The silence after the footsteps frightened Hunter more than the voice.
Voices could be measured.
Silence meant movement.
Someone outside was doing something.
Calling someone.
Destroying something.
Running.
Or preparing to enter.
Lorenzo turned from the door.
“Hunter.”
She looked up.
“If it opens, move behind the crib wall.”
She glanced at the white crib.
It would not protect them from everything.
But it would create distance.
She nodded.
“Mallory,” he said.
The nurse straightened.
“If you fall again, you fall away from the baby.”
Mallory nodded, face pale.
“Yes, sir.”
The formality sounded absurd in the locked nursery, but it steadied her.
Lorenzo approached Hunter slowly.
This time, she did not recoil.
He stopped at a respectful distance.
“May I take him?”
Hunter’s eyes filled.
The question mattered.
Not because Leo was hers.
He was not.
But because since Lorenzo entered, everyone had demanded, accused, locked, commanded.
This was the first request.
She looked down at Leo, sleeping lightly now, one tiny hand curled against the blanket.
“He just settled.”
Lorenzo nodded.
“Then keep him.”
The words surprised them both.
Hunter’s throat tightened.
“You trust me?”
His gaze moved to Leo.
“I trust what my son’s body is telling me.”
That was not soft.
But it was honest.
Hunter accepted it.
The monitor cast faint light over Lorenzo’s face. His anger had not left. It had been disciplined into something colder, more useful.
Mallory sat slowly on the edge of the armchair, not unconscious now, but weak.
“I remember perfume,” she whispered.
Lorenzo turned.
“What?”
“The glass. Someone handed it to me. I thought it was water. I remember perfume.”
Hunter’s eyes widened.
Lorenzo’s expression did not change, but the room seemed to tighten around him.
“What perfume?”
Mallory shook her head, frustrated.
“Expensive. Floral. Familiar.”
The intercom crackled once more.
No voice.
Only breathing.
Then the woman whispered, barely audible, “You should have let him go.”
Hunter instinctively covered Leo’s ear.
Lorenzo’s face became something deadly and still.
Before he could respond, the hallway lights went out beyond the door.
The red warning light remained.
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Inside the nursery, warm lamplight and cold shadows held them in place.
Read Chapter 10 👉 Because the voice outside finally revealed this was not a mistake, but Lorenzo still did not know who inside his mansion wanted Leo gone.
