The second left with a split lip from running into a door during one of the triplets’ elaborate traps.

The first nanny left screaming.

The third lasted eleven hours before abandoning her suitcase in the driveway and telling the staffing agency that no amount of money on earth was worth another night inside Adrian Moretti’s house.

By the end of the month, six professional caregivers had walked through the iron gates of the Moretti estate in Westchester County.

None had lasted forty-eight hours.

Then Claire Donovan arrived carrying a thrift-store suitcase, wearing a rain-soaked blazer, and having exactly thirty-seven dollars and fourteen cents in her checking account.

She had no idea six-year-old Noah Moretti was watching her from an upstairs window with binoculars.

She didn’t know Caleb was holding a bucket of water above the front entrance.

She certainly didn’t know Miles, the quietest of the three identical boys, had already whispered the words that had terrified every nanny before her.

“She’ll leave too.”

Claire stood outside the enormous stone mansion and stared up at its black-framed windows.

The place looked less like a home and more like somebody had built a fortress and then hired an architect to make it expensive.

A security camera turned toward her.

Claire looked directly into it.

“I know you can see me,” she said. “It’s raining. Open the gate.”

There was a pause.

Then the gates buzzed.

Claire dragged her suitcase up the long driveway.

Every step reminded her why she was there.

Three months earlier, she had been an assistant manager at a small hotel in Queens. Then the hotel changed ownership, half the staff was cut, and Claire had discovered how quickly a stable life could collapse when there was only one paycheck holding it together.

Her husband, Daniel, had died four years earlier after an undiagnosed heart condition.

Since then, Claire had raised their six-year-old daughter, Lily, alone.

She had survived grief.

She had survived medical bills.

She had survived nights when Lily asked why everybody else had a father at school events.

Now she was facing eviction.

The nanny agency had made the offer sound insane.

Forty-eight hours.

Stay forty-eight hours with Adrian Moretti’s triplets and receive a $20,000 signing bonus.

Leave early and receive nothing.

Claire needed less than half of that to save her apartment.

So when the massive front door opened, she told herself she could survive anything for two days.

Then the water hit her.

A bucket dumped from somewhere above the entrance.

Claire gasped as icy water drenched her hair, blazer, blouse and shoes.

Childish laughter exploded from the second-floor balcony.

A housekeeper standing inside covered her mouth.

“Oh, dear.”

Claire slowly wiped water from her face.

Three boys appeared above her.

Same dark hair.

Same gray eyes.

Same expression of delighted cruelty.

Claire looked up.

“Ten points for timing,” she called.

The laughter stopped.

“But terrible execution.”

The boys stared.

Claire picked up her suitcase.

“If your goal was to make me leave, you should’ve used mud. Water dries.”

One of them narrowed his eyes.

“Who are you?”

“Claire Donovan.”

“We don’t like Claire Donovan.”

“That’s okay. I haven’t decided if I like you yet either.”

The housekeeper made a choking sound that might have been a laugh.

Then a man’s voice came from behind Claire.

“Enough.”

Everything changed.

The housekeeper straightened.

The boys vanished from the railing.

Claire turned.

Adrian Moretti stood in the archway leading to the library.

He was thirty-eight, perhaps thirty-nine, tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a charcoal suit with no tie. He had the controlled stillness of a man who never needed to raise his voice because everyone around him had already learned what happened when he did.

Claire knew the rumors.

Construction companies.

Nightclubs.

Shipping contracts.

Gambling operations hidden behind legitimate businesses.

Violence that was never attached to his name in court but somehow always seemed to happen around men who crossed him.

She had expected a gangster from a movie.

Instead, he looked like a tired father who had forgotten how to sleep.

His gaze moved over her dripping clothes.

“You’re late.”

“My rideshare driver refused to come through the gate.”

“That sounds like your problem.”

Claire stared at him.

“And your sons dumping water on employees is apparently yours.”

The housekeeper looked horrified.

Adrian’s expression didn’t change.

But something moved behind his eyes.

“Office.”

He turned.

Claire followed.

The office contained books, dark wood and enough polished stone to make Claire afraid to touch anything.

Adrian sat behind his desk.

He didn’t offer her coffee.

He didn’t ask about her experience.

He opened a thin file.

“Widowed. One daughter. Six years old.”

Claire stiffened.

“That’s private.”

“You applied to work inside my home.”

“I applied to be a nanny, not investigated.”

His eyes lifted.

“In my world, those are the same thing.”

Claire almost stood up.

Then she thought of the eviction notice folded inside her purse.

Adrian leaned back.

“The agency explained the arrangement?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“If you remain until Sunday at six in the evening, you receive twenty thousand dollars. If you leave early, you receive your transportation home and nothing else.”

“And if I stay?”

His face hardened.

“You won’t.”