The first camera feed is the hallway outside the nursery.
Dim, green-tinted night vision.
Nothing but the faint glow of a nightlight and the outline of framed photos you stopped looking at.
You switch to the nursery camera, and your throat tightens.
Lina is on the floor between the two cribs, not sprawled out in sleep, not scrolling her phone, not doing anything you were prepared to be angry about.
She’s sitting upright, legs folded, shoulders curved protectively around Mateo, who is pressed skin-to-skin against her chest.
Her robe is open just enough for the baby to feel warmth, and her hand supports his back with the tenderness of someone holding a secret.
Samuel is asleep in his crib, tiny fists relaxed, breathing smooth.
Mateo isn’t screaming.
For the first time in what feels like forever, he’s quiet.
Lina rocks slowly, barely moving, like she’s afraid the world will punish her if she makes too much noise.
And then you hear it, faint through the audio, soft as a prayer.
A melody, hummed under her breath.
A lullaby you know down to the bones.
Aurelia’s lullaby.
A song she composed in the hospital when she was still alive, when hope still lived in the corners of that sterile room.
It was never recorded, never shared, never sung for anyone but your sons.
Nobody should know it.
Nobody.
Your hand tightens around the tablet so hard your knuckles ache.
Your mind scrambles for explanations, all of them failing.
Lina’s humming doesn’t sound like imitation.
It sounds like memory.
It sounds like she’s carrying something sacred.
You lean closer as if your body can crawl into the screen.
Mateo’s tiny chest rises and falls against her, regulated, calm, like her heartbeat is teaching his how to behave.
Your suspicion starts to crumble, not into relief, but into confusion so sharp it almost hurts worse than anger.
Because if Lina knows this song, it means your world contains doors you didn’t even know existed.
And in a house built of glass, hidden doors are the most terrifying thing of all.
Then the nursery door opens.
The feed shows the handle turning slowly, careful, as if whoever is entering doesn’t want to wake the babies.
Clara steps inside, wrapped in a silk robe that looks too luxurious for a late-night “check.”
She glances toward Lina, then toward the cribs, and her mouth tightens with annoyance.
In her hand is a small silver dropper, the kind you’ve seen in medical kits.
She moves not toward Mateo, the “sick” twin everyone worries about, but toward Samuel, the healthy one.
She reaches for a bottle sitting on the side table and uncaps it with practiced ease.
Your lungs forget how to work.
She tilts the dropper and squeezes.
A clear liquid threads into the milk like it belongs there.
She doesn’t hesitate.
She doesn’t flinch.
This is not a mistake.
This is routine.
Lina stands up in one motion, Mateo still against her chest, her body turning into a shield.
Her voice comes through the audio low but razor clean.
“Stop, Clara.”
Clara freezes for half a second, caught between surprise and contempt.
Lina takes a step forward, eyes locked on Clara’s hand.
“I switched the bottles,” Lina says, calm enough to make your blood go colder.
“That one’s only water now. So whatever you’re trying to slip in won’t do what you want.”
Clara’s lips curl.
“Who do you think you are?” she spits, and the venom in her voice makes your stomach twist.
Lina doesn’t back up.
“The sedative you’ve been putting in Mateo’s bottle,” Lina continues, “to make him look sick. I found the vial in your vanity yesterday.”
On screen, Clara’s face flashes with something raw and ugly: panic, rage, the fear of someone whose mask just cracked.
Your whole body feels like it’s tipping off a cliff, and the tablet shakes in your hands.
Clara laughs, but it’s the laugh of someone cornered.
“You’re a nanny,” she says, like the word is dirt.
“No one will believe you. Damian believes Mateo’s condition is genetic. He’s been told that already.”
She steps closer, and you see the calculation in her eyes, bright and cold.
“Once they declare him unfit, I get guardianship. I get the trust. I get everything. And you disappear.”
Lina’s jaw tightens, and Mateo stirs against her chest, a soft whimper like he senses danger in the air.
Lina shifts her hand to cover his head, protective, intimate, mothering.
“I’m not just a nanny,” Lina says.
She reaches into her apron pocket and pulls out something small: a worn leather medallion on a chain, old and scuffed like it’s been held too many times.
Her voice cracks for the first time.
“I was the nursing student assigned to Aurelia’s room the night she died.”
The world tilts again.
You feel the name Aurelia hit the air like a bell.
Clara’s eyes widen, and for the first time, she looks afraid.
Lina swallows hard, eyes bright with something you can’t name yet, grief maybe, or fury held in a tight fist.
“She told me you messed with her IV,” Lina says, each word landing like a stone.
“She knew you wanted the Blackwood name. She knew you wanted what she married into.”
Clara lifts her chin, trying to regain the upper hand, but she can’t hide the tremor in her mouth.
Lina goes on, voice shaking but relentless.
“Before she died, she made me promise something. That if she didn’t make it… I’d find her babies. I’d keep them safe from you.”
Clara sneers, but the sneer is thin, brittle.
“That’s insane,” she hisses.
Lina’s eyes don’t blink.
“I changed my name. I changed my hair. I waited. I studied your routines. I got hired. Because I knew you’d come for them the moment you thought you could.”
And then she says the line that knocks the breath out of you completely.
“Aurelia said you’d try to make one of them sick. Because sick children make desperate fathers. And desperate fathers sign anything.”
Clara lunges.
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