Maya’s POV
Daphne finds me in the kitchen during the mid-morning lull, both of us reaching for the coffee pot at the same moment.
Our hands almost touch. She pulls back first, laughing.
"Please." She gestures for me to go first. "I've had three cups already. I should probably switch to water before my heart stages a rebellion."
"Are you sure? I can wait."
"Honestly, if I have another cup right now, I'll be vibrating through my eleven o'clock call. Go ahead."
I pour carefully, hyperaware of the intimacy of this moment—just the two of us, the household quiet, the twins occupied with their morning activities under William’s watchful eye.
No performance required except the one I never stop giving.
Daphne settles onto a barstool across the island, cradling her own mug between her palms. The morning light catches the shadows under her eyes, the slight tension in her shoulders that never fully releases.
She looks tired, human. Nothing like the cold accomplice I'd imagined.
"Can I ask you something?" Her gaze is warm, genuinely interested. "And feel free to tell me it's none of my business. I won't be offended."
My pulse quickens, but I keep my expression open, curious. "Of course. What's on your mind?"
"What do you actually want to do? Long-term, I mean." She takes a sip of her coffee, watching me over the rim.
"This job—household management, childcare—it's valuable work. Important work. But I get the sense you're capable of more. I've seen the way you think, the way you solve problems. You're not someone who should be filing activity schedules forever."
I set down my mug, buying time to compose an answer. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I've been where you are. Well, not exactly where you are, but close enough. When I started working for Xander, I told myself it was temporary, a stepping stone."
She sets down her own mug, her expression thoughtful.
"But then life happened—the twins, everything after—and suddenly temporary became permanent. I don't want to be someone who holds you back from your own ambitions, Maya. If you have dreams beyond this house, I want to help you reach them, not trap you here."
The question lands like a blade between my ribs.
What do I want? Revenge. Justice. To watch Xander Hale lose everything the way I lost Lora.
To make him understand what it feels like when the person you love most is ripped away and there's nothing—nothing—you can do to bring them back.
That's all I've wanted for five years. That's the only thing that's kept me breathing. But I can't say that.
"I'm still figuring it out," I admit—and realize, with unsettling clarity, that it's not entirely a lie. "This position came at the right time. I needed... structure. Purpose. Something to anchor myself to."
"Were you drifting before?"
"Something like that." I trace my finger around the rim of my mug. "I lost someone. A few years ago. And after that, everything felt... untethered. Like I was moving through the world but not actually living in it."
Daphne nods slowly, like she understands something I didn't mean to reveal.
"I know that feeling. After the twins were born, I was so focused on survival that I forgot I was allowed to want things for myself. It took years to remember that I was still a person with ambitions, not just a mother running on fumes."
"How did you remember?"
"Honestly? Xander. He kept pushing me, kept insisting I was capable of more than I believed." A soft smile crosses her face.
"And eventually, I started believing him. Started building something that was mine, not just a reflection of someone else's expectations."
A pause. Then her expression shifts, something wistful entering her eyes.
"You remind me a little of Sarah—our last nanny." She says it gently, like she's offering a compliment.
"Fierce, capable. The kind of person who's clearly destined for bigger things than taking care of other people's children."
I think of what I know about Sarah—the photography program in Barcelona, the dreams she chased instead of staying. Twenty-three years old with her whole life stretching ahead of her like an open road.
I think of Lora at twenty-two: giving up her own dreams to raise a teenage sister. Working three jobs, sleeping four hours a night.
Never complaining, never resentful, never once making me feel like a burden even when I clearly was.
Lora never got Barcelona. Lora never got anything except exhaustion and sacrifice and a closed casket at thirty-three.
"You let her go," I say quietly. "Sarah. Even when the timing was terrible, even when you needed her."
Daphne tilts her head, something soft entering her expression.
"How could I not? She'd talked about that program for months, shown me pictures from their website, practiced her application essay on me during late nights when the twins wouldn't sleep. That dream was hers. I had no right to hold her back from it."
"Some people would have. Held her back, I mean. Made her feel guilty for leaving."
"Maybe." Daphne shrugs. "But that would say more about them than about Sarah. She deserved to chase something that was hers. Not everyone gets that chance."
She meets my eyes, and there's something knowing in her gaze—something that makes me feel seen in ways I don't want to be.
"Everyone deserves that, Maya. Everyone deserves to chase something that belongs to them."
Something cracks in my chest, a hairline fracture in the armor I've spent five years building.
‘Everyone deserves to chase something that's theirs.’
Lora deserved that. Lora deserved Barcelona, Paris, Tokyo—all the places she circled in magazines and never visited. Lora deserved a degree, a career, a life that wasn't consumed by keeping her baby sister afloat.
Lora deserved everything, and she got nothing.
And here I am, in the kitchen of the man I blame for her death, being offered kindness by his wife, being seen, being treated like someone whose dreams matter.
Daphne doesn't notice the fracture. She just smiles—warm, genuine, devastating—finishes her coffee, and slides off the barstool.
"I should check on the twins. Nina's been suspiciously quiet for the past twenty minutes, which usually means she's plotting something elaborate."
She pauses at the doorway. "Think about what I said, Maya. About what you want. I meant it—I want to help you get there, whatever it is."
"Thank you," I manage. "I will."
She disappears down the hallway, and I stand alone in the kitchen, my hands wrapped around a mug that's gone cold.
‘Everyone deserves to chase something that's theirs.’
For five years, I've been chasing revenge. The destruction of Alexander Hale and everything he loves. I've built my entire existence around that singular purpose, convinced that Lora's ghost demanded nothing less.
But what if I'm wrong? What if the monster I've been hunting doesn't exist?
What if the man who killed my sister is also a husband who softens when he says his wife's name, a father who sits through tea parties with stuffed elephants, a person capable of love and tenderness and all the things I've told myself he doesn't deserve?
What happens when the only thing you've chased for five years turns out to be built on quicksand?