The questions came then, not as thoughts but as accusations.
How had I let my daughter become so attached to someone I was supposed to hate?
Have I abandoned her after Elena’s death? Did I forget how to love my own daughter?
Somehow, deep inside me, I already had an answer.
3.Anna
Iswiped the tears away with the back of my hand, angry that I was letting Mr. Spencer get to me. The ammonia scent of glass cleaner bit my nose, sharp and clarifying. The marble countertop gleamed back at me, cold and perfect.
Get back to work.
His voice, that arctic tone, still echoed in the hollow space of the kitchen. I was used to being spoken down to. Carter had made an art form of it in his casual cruelty and small humiliations to put me back in place. But this was different. This wasn't the hot, messy rage of a drunk looking for a fight. This was a clinical dismissal, as if I were a malfunctioning appliance he needed to unplug. Like I was nothing. And it stung more than I wanted to admit because for a few, precious minutes, I hadn't been the cleaner, the ghost, the scared woman with a bruise on her soul.
I'd been the lady at a child’s tea party. I'd made Daisy laugh.
That sound… it was like finding a single, perfect wildflower growing through a crack in concrete. It was proof that light could exist even here, in this sterile, silent penthouse. Daisy's silent affection, and the way she'd slip her hand into mine without hesitation, the pictures she'd leave tucked into my cleaning caddy, many crayon drawings of stick figures holding hands, flowers, hearts, they were tiny, fragile gifts.
They felt like proof I wasn't completely ruined, that despite everything Carter had done, despite the terrible guilt I carried, I could still offer something gentle, something good, to the world. And now her cold, distant father had thrown a bucket of ice water over it all.
I finished cleaning the kitchen hastily, my movements sharp and precise. No one ever really notices the woman who cleans up after them. That's the point. I'd perfected the art of invisibility over the past eighteen months, entering and exiting people’s lives without as much as a footnote, merely existing in their periphery. It was safer that way. Safer to be overlooked, forgotten, unremarkable.
I've been cleaning the same billionaire's penthouse every Friday for the last nine months. Jack Spencer. CEO. Widower. Father to a silent little girl who'd somehow wormed her way into my damaged heart. He's usually home when I'm there, but he keeps to himself, always taking his meetings behind closeddoors. I'd caught glimpses of him in the form of a shadow passing through hallways, hearing the low murmur of his voice from behind the closed office door, and the occasional cold glance when our paths crossed. But mostly, he left me alone to do my work in peace.
The penthouse was always a study in contradictions. It was enormous, soaring ceilings that made me feel impossibly small, art worth more than I'd earn in ten lifetimes hanging on walls I wasn't supposed to look at too closely, and yet, it had no warmth. No lived-in clutter. No family photos smiling from the mantel. Just a showroom where loneliness and grief were the main exhibits. The only room that felt alive was Daisy's, a riot of color and toys spilling from shelves, drawings taped to walls. The rest of it felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something that would never come.
My next task was the west wing guest rooms. They were never used. I'd been cleaning this place for nine months and had never seen a single guest, but the contract demanded they be kept in a state of perpetual readiness. I moved through them like a sleepwalker, dusting pristine shelves of books that had never been opened, their spines stiff and uncracked, vacuuming carpets that bore no footprints, fluffing pillows that had never cradled a head.
I was on my knees, wiping the baseboard behind a heavy mahogany desk, when I heard the soft, familiar patter of small feet. I looked up.
Daisy stood in the doorway, her stuffed rabbit, Mr. Bounces, clutched to her chest. Her gray eyes, so like her father's yet so different in warmth, were wide with expectation. She didn't speak. She never did. But she raised her free hand and made a small, beckoning gesture, then pointed down the hall toward her room. It was her universal sign:Come play. Come read. Come be with me.
My poor heart. "Oh, sweetie," I whispered, my voice aching with regret. I listened, straining my ears for the sound of her father’s footsteps, his voice, the oppressive weight of his presence. The penthouse was silent, but that meant nothing. He could be anywhere. "I can't right now. I have to finish my job. You remember what your daddy said."
Her face didn't crumple dramatically. It was subtler, worse. The light in her eyes dimmed by degrees, like someone slowly turning down a lamp. Her lower lip trembled, just once, and a single, fat tear escaped and traced a slow path down her cheek. She looked down at Mr. Bounces, as if ashamed of her own hope, as if she should have known better than to ask. It was the quiet, expected rejection of a child who was used to being disappointed. It broke me.
"Okay," I breathed, the word a surrender. My job wasn't worth this. Nothing was worth putting that look on her face. "Just for a little bit. And we have to be very, very quiet. Deal?"
She nodded, her movement swift and eager, a flicker of the earlier light returning to hereyes. She reached out and took my hand, her small fingers trustingly wrapping around mine, warm and soft. She led me not to her room, but into the vast, open-plan living area. She let go, looked at me with a mischievous glint that made her look so much younger, so much more like a normal five-year-old, and then darted behind a large sofa.
A game of chase. The stress from Jack’s dismissal slowly slipped away from my mind. I played along, deliberately slow, exaggerating my movements, letting her "escape" around corners with theatrical gasps of surprise. For the first time in hours, my smile felt real, not painted on for survival. Her silent laughter, the shaking of her shoulders, the way she'd peek around furniture to make sure I was still following, the pure, unselfconscious joy, it wrapped around my heart and tightened, a sweet, painful ache that reminded me why I kept going.
We wove past the dining table with its unused chairs, around the grand piano that nobody played, and into a hallway I didn't normally clean. This was the private wing, Jack Spencer's domain. I slowed, my professional alarm bells ringing loud and insistent.
"Daisy, wait, we shouldn't?—"
But she was a quick, tiny shadow, fearless in her own home. She darted through an open door halfway down the hall. Panic, thin and sharp, shot through me. I hurried after her, my soft-soled shoes silent on the plush runner, my heart rate picking up.
The room was an office, but it felt more likea command center, a war room. It was colder than the rest of the penthouse, both in temperature and atmosphere, as if the air conditioning was set ten degrees lower here. One entire wall was a bank of sleek, darkened monitors—at least six of them, maybe more. The desk was a vast, black expanse of polished wood, devoid of personal items except for a single, expensive-looking pen and a smartphone. Files were stacked with geometric precision, their edges perfectly aligned. The air smelled of leather and sandalwood, and underneath it, something metallic, a faint smell of cold steel. This space was intensely, palpably off-limits. Every instinct I had screamed:Get out. Get out now.
"Daisy, come here, right now," I whispered, my voice urgent and low. I reached for her, but she spun away in a playful pirouette, still lost in our game, oblivious to the danger. Her shoulder caught the edge of the desk.
It wasn't a hard bump, but it was enough. A neat stack of papers slithered off the edge, fanning out across the floor in a white cascade, pages scattering in all directions.
"Oh, no, no, no," I murmured, dropping to my knees. My priority was the papers. Get them back in order, get Daisy out, pretend this never happened, pray he never found out. My hands scrambled to gather them, my eyes scanning to ensure they were in sequence, looking for page numbers or headers. I began dusting the shelves in his office when his phone buzzed on thedesk beside me.
I heard the shower start from down the hall. The sound was faint but distinct. A rush of water, the hiss of plumbing pipes. He was in the bathroom. The adjoining bathroom. Right on the other side of that wall.
