Chapter 3 - Shadows of the Past
By 8:05 AM, Abigail stood outside the heavy mahogany doors of Pedro’s private study. She didn't knock timidly; she gave two sharp, authoritative raps and pushed the door open before a response could be muttered.
Pedro was sitting behind his massive oak desk, surrounded by multiple glowing monitors displaying stock tickers, real estate acquisitions, and security feeds of the estate. He looked up, his brow furrowing as she walked in uninvited and took a seat opposite him without waiting for an invitation.
“You have a habit of bypassing protocol,” Pedro noted, folding his hands over a leather-bound ledger.
“Protocol is fine for boardrooms,” Abigail replied, resting her hands flat on the desk. “In a house with two grieving, neglected children, protocol is just a wall people hide behind. Now, what do you want to discuss? I have a geography lesson planned at nine, and I prefer not to waste time.”
Pedro leaned back in his leather chair, studying her with undisguised curiosity. Last night, before she arrived, his private investigator had run a comprehensive background check on Abigail Hill. The file was sparse, clean, and fiercely guarded.
“Providence,” Pedro said softly, watching her eyes for a reaction. “Raised by your grandmother. Parents out of the picture before you could walk. You worked your way through college debt-free while managing group homes for troubled youth before spending three years as a private counselor for elite families in Boston. Why Newport? Why Breakers Mansion?”
Abigail didn't blink. The mention of her past didn't make her flinch; it merely hardened her resolve.
“People with money often make the mistake of thinking wealth can buy immunity from grief,” Abigail said, her voice dropping into a register that was fiercely protective. “You think because your sons live in a castle and wear designer clothes, they are somehow luckier than the kids I worked with in the state-funded shelters. They aren't. They are starving for boundaries, Mr. Jacobs. And you are starving behind this desk.”
Pedro’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You know nothing about me, Miss Hill.”
“I know everything I need to know,” she countered instantly, leaning forward. “Ten nannies in one month. You didn't fire them because they couldn't handle the boys. You fired them because they started getting close to your sons, and the moment you felt like you were losing control of your own household, you sabotaged the placement. You’re terrified of being abandoned, so you push people out before they can leave you.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Pedro felt as though she had reached through the heavy mahogany desk, ripped open his chest, and laid bare every secret he had spent two years burying beneath balance sheets and corporate acquisitions. No one spoke to him like that. No one saw through his armor with such surgical precision.
“You are dangerously overstepping your bounds,” Pedro whispered, his voice dangerously low.
“Then fire me,” Abigail challenged, holding his gaze without a single tremor. “Go ahead. Make it eleven in a month. Prove every fear my grandmother told me about men who build walls so high they forget what's inside them.”
Pedro stared at her for a long, agonizing minute. His chest rose and fell in a slow, controlled rhythm. For the first time in his life, he didn't reach for the phone to call HR. He didn't issue a threat.
Instead, he closed the ledger.
“Geography is at nine,” Pedro said quietly, turning his attention back to his monitors. “Don't let them slack on their math either. Jerry struggles with fractions.”
Abigail stood up, a ghost of a victorious smile touching the corner of her lips. “Not anymore he won't.”
As she walked out of the study and closed the heavy door behind her, Pedro let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He picked up his encrypted phone, opened the investigator's file on Abigail Hill again, and scrolled past the public records straight to a sealed note at the very bottom—a note he hadn't fully read before.
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It detailed an incident from her youth in Providence: how a ten-year-old Abigail had stood in front of a social worker, refusing to let her younger brother be separated from her, staring down a room full of bureaucrats until they relented.
She doesn't break, Pedro realized with a jolt. She fights.
