Chapter 4 - A Mother's Secret
Damian turned his gaze from the departing car down to Claire. She was still shaking, her chest heaving as she tried to regain control of her breathing. The crumpled envelope had fallen to the gravel between them.
"Pick it up," Damian said quietly, nodding toward the paper.
Claire knelt, her fingers trembling as she retrieved the envelope. She stood up, smoothing down her apron, her eyes fixed on the ground. She looked smaller than her twenty-nine years, worn down by a grief and a financial trap that had been slowly crushing her soul.
"I am sorry, Mr. Russo," she whispered, her voice choked with humiliation. "I didn't mean to bring my problems onto the estate grounds. I tried to handle it. I thought... I thought if I just worked harder, paid down the interest—"
"How long?" Damian interrupted.
Claire blinked, looking up in confusion. "Sir?"
"How long have you been hiding eighty thousand dollars of debt while raising a child in my home?"
"For... for over a year. Ever since my husband passed away from the accident. He left behind commercial transport contracts that went under, and the lenders forged his signatures on secondary guarantees. It wasn't my fault, but legally..." She choked back a sob, a single tear cutting a clean path through the dust on her cheek. "I’m paying it back. Dollar by dollar. But the interest... it grows faster than I can earn."
Damian looked at her, remembering the sight he had left in his dressing room three floors up. A three-year-old girl sitting alone, trying to mend her mother's employer's shirt with a sewing needle because she thought her mother was overwhelmed and failing.
"A three-year-old child was sitting in my dressing room, sewing my shirt," Damian said, his voice entirely devoid of inflection, making it all the more terrifying.
Claire gasped, her face turning chalk white. She dropped to her knees right there on the gravel. "Please! Please don't fire us! Lily didn't mean any harm! She saw me crying over the tear this morning, and she wanted to help, she has this childish idea that if everything is neat, bad things won't happen—please, Mr. Russo, put her on the street and I'll go anywhere, but don't punish her—"
"Get up, Claire," Damian commanded.
She didn't move, her forehead nearly touching the stones.
"I said, get up."
Damian reached down, caught her by the forearm with a grip of steel, and hauled her effortlessly to her feet. He wasn't gentle, but neither was he cruel; it was the practical handling of someone used to commanding chaos.
"I don't fire people for trying to fix my clothes," Damian said evenly. "And I certainly don't throw children out into the cold." He released her arm and pointed back toward the main house. "Go back inside. Wash your daughter's finger. It's bleeding."
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Claire stared at him, stunned, her mouth slightly open. "You're... you're not firing me?"
"If I wanted to fire you, you would already be packing," Damian replied, turning back toward the service stairs. Over his shoulder, he added, "Meet me in my study in twenty minutes. Bring the financial statements from those lenders."
