Maybe worse.
Then something inside her moved faster than fear.
“Please,” she whispered, kneeling beside the broken glass. “Let me hold her for one minute.”
Gabriel stared at her like she had spoken a foreign language.
But he was too tired to argue.
He placed Bella in Lucia’s arms.
The miracle happened before anyone could explain it.
Bella stopped crying.
Her tiny body, stiff from hours of distress, softened against Lucia’s chest. Her breathing slowed. Her little fingers curled into the fabric of Lucia’s uniform. She looked up at Lucia’s face, blinked twice, and fell asleep.
Then Sophie stopped too.
Henry looked down at the baby in his arms, stunned, as Sophie’s sobs faded into small hiccups, then silence.
Gabriel sank to his knees beside the nursery wall.
Not dramatically.
Not like a powerful man making a scene.
Like a father whose bones had finally given out.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
Lucia looked down at Bella, afraid to move. “Nothing, sir. I just held her.”
But that was not true, not completely.
Lucia knew babies. She knew the weight of them, the fear of losing them, the way a child’s body can tell the truth adults try to hide. Years ago, before her ex-husband shattered her life and made her lose the baby she had carried for six months, Lucia had spent every night singing to the daughter she never got to meet. That grief had never left her hands.
Maybe Bella felt that.
Maybe Sophie did too.
Or maybe, in a house full of control, schedules, medication, and suspicion, Lucia was the first person who held them without trying to prove anything.
From that day on, everything changed.
Gabriel began asking for Lucia whenever the twins could not settle. Henry watched her with quiet gratitude. Even the private nurses, who first looked offended, slowly admitted the babies responded to her. Bella would turn her head toward Lucia’s voice before Lucia even reached the crib. Sophie would grip her finger and stop trembling.
For the first time in five months, the east wing slept.
And that was when Dr. Victoria Hale began to hate her.
Victoria had been the twins’ pediatric consultant since birth. She was elegant, sharp, always dressed in cream or gray, with a medical bag that matched her shoes and a smile that never reached her eyes. She had known Gabriel for six years, long before his wife died giving birth to the twins. Everyone in the house understood, even if no one said it out loud, that Victoria had imagined herself becoming Mrs. Blackwell one day.
Then Lucia arrived in a cleaning uniform and did what Victoria could not.
She brought peace.
That was unforgivable.
