THE MAFIA BOSS FROZE WHEN A LITTLE GIRL WALKED INTO HIS MANSION AND SAID, “MY MOM COULDN’T COME TODAY…”
PART 3
Lucas did not send Emma home alone. He had her warmed and fed, and then he put her in his own car, with Harold driving and two of his most trusted men as escort, and he went with her himself, to the address on Sarah Carter’s resume.
It was a small apartment in a poor part of the city, and when Sarah Carter opened the door, feverish and frantic, and saw her six-year-old daughter standing beside a tall, dangerous-looking stranger in an expensive coat, she nearly collapsed.
“Emma! Oh my God, Emma, I woke up and you were gone, I’ve been calling everyone, I was about to call the police—” She pulled her daughter into her arms, sobbing, and then looked up at Lucas with the terror of a poor woman who finds a powerful strange man at her door with her child. “Who are you? What, what is this?”
“My name is Lucas Blackwood,” he said. “Your daughter came to my home this morning. To interview for the cleaning position. In your place. Because you were too sick to come and she didn’t want you to lose the job.”
Sarah’s face crumpled with a mixture of horror and heartbreak and exhausted love. “She, oh Emma. Emma, you can’t, you can’t just leave, you scared me so badly.” She looked back at Lucas, bracing herself. “I’m so sorry. Whatever she did, whatever trouble she caused, I’m so sorry. Please, I’ll, I can explain—”
“She didn’t cause any trouble,” Lucas said. “She rode two buses in the rain and faced down a houseful of strangers to protect her mother’s chance at a job. She is the bravest person who has walked into my home in years.” He paused. “You have the position, Ms. Carter. And we are going to discuss your salary, which will be considerably higher than what was advertised. But first, you are sick, and you are going to see a doctor. Today. I’ll arrange it.”
Sarah stared at him, uncomprehending. “I, I don’t understand. Why would you do that? You don’t even know us.”
Lucas looked at Emma, who was still wrapped in his coat, watching the exchange with solemn eyes.
“Because your daughter reminded me of something I had forgotten,” he said quietly. “That there are still people in this world who do the right thing for no reason except love. I’ve been surrounded, lately, by people who want me dead. By betrayal. By calculation. And then a six-year-old showed up at my gate in an apron three sizes too big, having risked everything to help her sick mother, asking nothing for herself.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d forgotten that kind of thing still existed. I’d like to keep it close, if you’ll let me.”
It was the beginning of something none of them expected.
Sarah Carter came to work at Blackwood Estate, and she was, as Emma had promised, an excellent cleaner, thorough and honest and tireless. And Emma came with her, after school, doing her homework at the big kitchen table, gradually filling the cold, fortress-like mansion with something it had never held: the laughter of a child.
But there was still the matter of the bomb. The traitor inside the house.
And it was Emma, in the end, who unknowingly helped Lucas find him.
