The pregnancy test was still warm in my pocket when Mrs. Ashford handed me the termination letter. "Effective immediately, Sophia." She didn't look up from her phone. "We've found a younger au pair. Someone moreā¦ suitable for the children." I stood in the marble foyer of the Ashford estate, the house I'd cleaned, cooked in, and bled for over three years. The house where I'd raised two children who called me "Mama Soph" before their real mother corrected them. "May I ask why?" My voice was steady. I'd learned long ago that crying in front of this family was like bleeding in shark-infested water. "You're getting too attached." She finally looked up, her Botoxed face arranged in rehearsed sympathy. "The children need boundaries. And frankly, you've been lookingā¦ unwell. We can't have that around the kids." Unwell. I was eight weeks pregnant with her son's baby, and she was firing me for looking unwell. "Does Dominic know?" I asked. Something flickered in her eyesāLoss? Annoyance? "My son is engaged to Vivienne Hale. The wedding is in six weeks." She placed an envelope on the hall table. "There's three months' severance. Be gone by tonight." Three months' pay for three years of service. For raising her grandchildren while she lunched at the club. For warming her son's bed when he stumbled home drunk and lonely. For carrying his child right now, this very second. "Mrs. Ashford," I said carefully, "I need to speak with Dominic. It's important." "No." Her voice turned to ice. "Whatever you think happened between you and my sonāforget it. He was lonely. You were convenient. That's all it was." She picked up her HermĆØs bag and walked past me, heels clicking on marble. At the door, she paused. "And Sophia? If you try to contact him, or make anyā¦ claimsā¦ our lawyers will destroy you. You have no proof of anything. You're a nanny. He's an Ashford." The door closed behind her. I stood alone in the foyer, hand pressed against my stomach, staring at the family portrait on the wall. Dominic's face smiled down at meāthe same face that had whispered "I love you" in the dark, the same lips that had kissed my forehead and promised we'd figure things out. I pulled out my phone and called him. It rang once. Twice. A woman answered. "Hello? Dom's phone." Her voice was bright, musical. Vivienne. "I need to speak with Dominic." "Oh, is this the help? Mrs. Ashford said you'd been let go. Sorry about that, sweetie." A muffled giggle. "Dom, your old nanny's callingāshould I tell her you're busy?" I heard his voice in the background, distant and careless: "Just block the number." The line went dead. I lowered the phone slowly. Three years. I gave this family three years, my body, my heart, and the life growing inside me. And I was "the help." I picked up the envelope, stuffed it in my bag, and walked toward the servants' exitāthe only door I'd ever been allowed to use. But as I passed the study, I noticed the door was ajar. Inside, on the mahogany desk, sat an open folder. I shouldn't have looked. But the name on the first page caught my eyeānot Ashford. My name. My real name. My birth name, the one I hadn't used since the orphanage. And beneath it, a photograph of a baby girl, stamped with a red seal I recognized. My hands went cold. I wasn't just their nanny. I was something they'd been hiding from me my entire life.
