Chapter 9 - THE FIRST NANNY’S STORY
Megan’s statement opened another door.
Lakeshore Domestic Staffing reviewed its own records and discovered she had never been placed through them.
A different agency handled her.
Dominic’s staff obtained her exit questionnaire with permission.
Reason for leaving:
Household authority conflict.
No mention of Bianca by name.
One handwritten line:
Unable to maintain professional childcare standards when non-parent adult overrides developmental recommendations.
Dominic read it.
“What developmental recommendation?”
Megan remembered.
Sleep training.
Bianca believed Luca cried to manipulate adults.
At nine months.
“She wanted us to leave him longer than his pediatric sleep plan allowed.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“She told me I was soft.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
He thought of Bianca calling Luca difficult.
Patterns were not proof of physical wrongdoing.
But they revealed worldview.
Bianca interpreted infant distress as challenge.
Challenge as disrespect.
Disrespect as something to defeat.
Talia interpreted distress as information.
The difference was enormous.
Dominic asked Megan:
“Why did you never tell me?”
She met his eyes.
“Would you have believed me?”
The question angered him.
Not at her.
At himself.
“I don't know.”
“Exactly.”
Megan continued:
“You were grieving. Bianca was the person holding everything together.”
That was true.
After Gianna died, Dominic had functioned by compartmentalizing.
Funeral.
Lawyers.
Luca.
Business.
Bianca arrived as Gianna’s longtime acquaintance through charity circles.
She knew how to manage rooms.
She never asked Dominic to talk about grief.
She handled people.
He mistook efficiency for intimacy.
Maybe eventually it became intimacy.
Maybe he had needed it enough not to look closely.
Megan said:
“Bianca was kind when you were present.”
Another sentence that stayed.
Dominic thanked her.
She looked surprised.
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“I am.”
“At me?”
“No.”
That answer was new for him too.
Afterward, he visited Gianna’s grave for the first time in four months.
Not because he believed in asking the dead for advice.
Because grief had become part of the case.
Bianca’s entrance into Luca’s life had happened during a period when Dominic was least capable of setting boundaries.
He had allowed access because she made life easier.
Then engagement.
Then household authority.
Then estate questions.
One incremental step at a time.
He stood beside Gianna’s grave and thought about something Talia had told Martin months earlier:
Luca needs consistency more than replacement.
He had dismissed it as nanny philosophy.
Now it sounded like wisdom.
When Dominic returned home, Bianca was sitting alone in the living room.
The same room where everything began.
She looked smaller without the wedding planners, stylists, calls.
“Did you see Megan?”
“Yes.”
“She hates me.”
“Maybe.”
“She wants revenge.”
“Maybe.”
Bianca stared.
“That's all?”
“No.”
Dominic sat opposite her.
“Why did you want her gone?”
“She was disrespectful.”
“Specific.”
Bianca looked frustrated.
“She made decisions without me.”
“You were not Luca’s parent.”
“I was helping you.”
“That is not the same.”
Her face hardened.
“You asked me to help.”
“Yes.”
“And every time I did, staff reminded me I had no title.”
“So you wanted the title.”
“I wanted a place.”
There.
Dominic heard the deeper thing.
Bianca had not simply wanted authority.
She wanted legitimacy.
A woman entering a widower’s home could feel provisional.
A nanny with daily access looked more permanent than she did.
That insecurity was human.
What she had done with it was not.
Dominic said:
“You could have built a relationship with Luca.”
“I tried.”
“You tried to remove everyone he already trusted.”
Bianca looked away.
“Because none of you left room.”
Dominic’s voice softened slightly.
“Love is not a chair, Bianca.”
She looked at him.
“Luca did not have to love Talia less to love you.”
Her eyes filled.
For one second, Dominic saw the woman he might have married.
Then she said:
“You don't understand what it’s like to enter a house where a dead woman is perfect and the nanny is necessary.”
He did understand.
More than she thought.
But empathy was not absolution.
“Then tell me what happened in this room.”
Bianca’s face closed.
“I already did.”
And there it was.
The wall.
She could explain every feeling except the event.
Dominic knew then that the feelings were not the defense.
May you like
They were the motive.
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