The ceiling plaster did not just crack; it practically wept white dust as a heavy thud vibrated through the mahogany crown molding of Adrian Moretti’s private study.

Climbing the grand staircase of the Moretti estate felt less like walking up to a nursery and more like advancing through a heavily fortified trench in Verdun.

The walls were lined with oil paintings of stern-looking men in nineteenth-century formalwear—ancestors who looked like they traded in stolen opium and railroad monopolies. I ignored them, keeping my hand trailing lightly along the polished mahogany banister, listening.

Silence. That was the dangerous part.

When children like Leo, Mason, and Dominic were quiet, it meant they were engineering something catastrophic.

I reached the second-floor landing. The hallway stretched out in both directions, carpeted in thick Persian rugs that muffled my footsteps. To my left, a set of double doors stood slightly ajar. From within came the faint, suspicious hum of a high-powered electric leaf blower.

A leaf blower. Inside a carpeted bedroom.

I didn't knock. I pushed the door open with the flat of my hand and stepped inside.

The room looked like a meteorological disaster zone crossed with a toy factory explosion. Stuffed animals hung from the crystal chandelier like furry parachutists. Dozens of comic books were shredded into confetti and scattered knee-deep across the floor like autumn leaves. And standing atop a massive mahogany four-poster bed was Mason, wearing a plastic pirate captain’s hat, aiming a commercial-grade battery-powered leaf blower directly at the doorway.

Behind him, Leo and Dominic were crouched near the walk-in closet, armed to the teeth with super-soakers filled with what smelled suspiciously like liquid dish soap and green food coloring.

When the leaf blower blasted a hurricane-force wall of shredded paper and dust straight into my face, I didn't scream. I didn't duck. I simply planted my feet, crossed my arms over my chest, and stood there while green confetti stuck to my wet blazer like barnacles on a shipwreck.

Mason cut the leaf blower engine. The sudden silence in the room was deafening.

He blinked his gray eyes, his little chest heaving under a skull-printed t-shirt. “Why aren't you crying?”

“Because paper cuts hurt, Mason, but they don't leave permanent damage,” I said, stepping further into the room, my boots crunching through the sea of comic books. I reached out and plucked a shred of paper off my shoulder, inspecting it with feigned boredom. “Though I have to say, recycling The Amazing Spider-Man #300 for confetti? That’s a federal offense in certain collector circles.”

Leo popped up from behind the bedpost, clutching his super-soaker like an assault rifle. “She knows our names!”

“Your father gave me your file,” I replied smoothly, closing the distance between us until I stood right at the edge of the mattress. I looked up at Mason, who instinctively took half a step backward, though he tried to puff out his chest to hide it. “Leo is the tactician. Mason is the explosives and propulsion expert. And Dominic—sweet Dominic, hiding behind the beanbag chair with the bottle of baby oil—you’re the saboteur.”

Dominic slowly lowered his head from behind the oversized leather beanbag, looking betrayed. “How did she know about the baby oil?”

“Because the floor near the threshold is already slippery enough to snap a grown man’s femur,” I said, looking down at the slick, glistening hardwood just outside the bedroom door. “Very subtle, boys. But if you wanted me to break my neck, you should have used cooking oil. Baby oil is amateur hour; it leaves too much friction.”

Mason dropped the leaf blower onto the mattress with a heavy thud. His lower lip quivered for a fraction of a second—not with sadness, but with absolute, incandescent frustration. None of the other nannies had talked to them like this. The others had cried, screamed, threatened to call the police, or run crying to Adrian. I was treating their reign of terror like a mildly disappointing Yelp review.

“We don't want you here,” Mason whispered, his voice cracking slightly with childish defiance. “Dad just hires people because he thinks we’re broken. We’re not broken. We want you to leave.”

I looked at the three identical faces—faces that held the unmistakable ghost of a mother who was completely absent from this mausoleum of a mansion. There were no family portraits downstairs featuring a woman. Just Adrian, towering and cold, and these three boys bouncing off the walls of a gilded cage.

“I know you want me to leave,” I said softly, letting the sarcastic edge drop from my voice just enough for them to hear the truth underneath. “And normally, I’d oblige. But I have a six-year-old daughter named Lily who needs braces, and your father is paying twenty grand for me to sit in this oversized museum of a house until Sunday evening. So unless you boys want to start coughing up cash for my dental fund, we’re going to have to reach a professional compromise.”

Dominic crawled out from behind the beanbag, rubbing his nose. “What kind of compromise?”

“Step one,” I said, kicking off my ruined heels and letting my bare feet sink into the shredded comic book confetti. “You help me clean up this paper nightmare before your father comes back upstairs. Step two, you tell me where the kitchen is so I can make myself a cup of hot tea that hasn't been spiked with dish soap. And step three—” I pointed a finger directly at Mason’s nose—“you never, ever dump ice water on my head again unless you’re prepared for me to retaliate with a frozen turkey.”

Mason stared at me for three long, agonizing seconds. Then, slowly, a very small, very reluctant smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.