Chapter 1
I was dying on the carpet of my locked study when a four-year-old girl saved my life.
My throat had closed so fast I could not call for help.
One sip of wine.
Then fire in my chest.
Then no air.
I hit the desk when I fell. My phone landed inches from my hand, but my fingers would not obey me.
The door was closed.
My guards were outside.
No one heard me.
Then the study door opened.
A tiny girl with dark curls stood there clutching a stuffed rabbit.
She stared at me with serious gray-blue eyes.
She did not scream.
She ran.
For one awful second, I thought she had left me.
Then she came back with a pink backpack.
She dropped beside me, pulled out an EpiPen, removed the blue cap, and pressed it into my thigh.
“One,” she whispered. “Two. Three.”
Her hand shook.
But she did not stop.
I knew what that EpiPen meant.
I knew because my men had checked every staff medical file for emergencies.
Ellie Carter had a severe allergy.
That pen was her last one.
She used it on me anyway.
My chest opened with a violent gasp.
Air tore into me like broken glass.
Ellie sat beside me, hugging her rabbit.
“You needed it too,” she whispered.
Hours earlier, I had found her hidden in the basement staff room.
Her mother, Hannah Carter, worked as a housekeeper in my mansion.
Her sitter had canceled.
She had nowhere else to take her child.
I should have fired her.
Instead, I told her to keep the child downstairs and asked the kitchen to send warm lunch.
I had not done a kind thing in years.
Not since my wife Elena and my little daughter Lily died in a car bombing meant for me.
After that, I became stone.
Then Ellie found me dying.
And used the only medicine that could save her own life.
Three hours later, I woke in my private medical suite.
Dr. Greene leaned over me.
“Someone put a concentrated allergen in your wine,” he said. “Without the epinephrine, you would have died.”
My voice scraped out.
“Who?”
Dr. Greene hesitated.
Then the door opened.
My guards dragged Hannah Carter inside.
She was pale.
Terrified.
“She carried the tray,” one of my men said.
Hannah looked at me.
“I didn’t do it.”
Before anyone moved, Ellie pushed past the guards.
“No,” she cried. “Mommy didn’t.”
She pointed toward the hallway.
“The old man put blue drops in the drink.”
The room froze.
Because the old man was Vincent Bellini.
May you like
My butler.
The man who had served my family for twenty years.
