“The children—”
“Will slow us down.”
“They’re six months old.”
“And they won’t stop crying.” Victoria shoved the last box into the bag. “Damian can have more children. I’m not dying in this house.”
She zipped the duffel shut and followed the guard toward the private staircase to the dock. Clara watched them disappear. Oliver screamed again. She kicked off her work shoes.
The nursery’s main corridor was exposed, but the linen closet connected to its bathroom. Clara slipped through in her socks, crossed the cold tile, and pushed the nursery door open. Oliver lay red-faced in his crib; Owen was awake beside him, tiny hands opening and closing.
“I’m here.”
She lifted Oliver to one shoulder and gathered Owen with her other arm. Boots approached outside. She turned toward the bathroom — too late. “Check the children’s room,” a man ordered. She turned to the oak bookcase. During renovations, a carpenter had shown her the old service passage concealed behind it. She drove her shoulder against the frame. It moved. She squeezed through with both boys and pulled it closed just as the nursery door crashed inward.
“Cribs are empty.” Through a split in the wood, Clara saw black clothing and raised rifles. Oliver drew breath. Clara tucked him against her skin, rocking both children to the rhythm of her heartbeat. A man turned toward the bookcase. He listened. Then another voice: “They took them out the back. Burn the place.”
Footsteps retreated. A sharp chemical smell entered the passage. On the other side of the wall, someone struck a match.
INTO THE WOODS
Smoke bled through the paneling. Flames roared in the nursery. The hidden passage became an oven. Clara descended the steep, dark stairs of an old Victorian vent — stockinged feet slipping, heart hammering — until the nursery floor collapsed above her with a deafening crash. The passage opened into the wine cellar. She forced open a rusted coal chute and crawled out into the muddy grass. Behind her, the Costello estate was a towering inferno. She ran into the woods.
An hour later the rain started — freezing, relentless. Clara sheltered under an overturned pine, pressing the twins against her bare skin for warmth, draping her cardigan over them like a tent. She thought of her mother in a hospital bed in Providence, waiting for the paycheck that kept her treatment going. She had taken the maid job to pay for surgeries. Now she was a fugitive carrying the heirs to a mafia empire.