Part 4 — My Nanny Saved My Children During an Armed Attack, but When She Took the Music Box, My Guard’s Smile Disappeared

…and that night I realized for the first time that the enemy was not standing only beyond the door.

Mason took the children into a storage room standing along the wall. There was a small hiding place there, which I had designed myself but had never used.

“Lock the door,” I told Claire.

“What are you going to do?”

“I will talk to them.”

“Not alone.”

She held her bleeding arm and stood beside me.

The banging of an iron door sounded from the garage.

Then a second one.

My security system was shutting down one after another. Mason looked at the tablet, and his face changed.

“Someone entered the internal network.”

“From outside?”

“No. From inside the house.”

Everything fell into place in one second.

The music box.

Natalie’s voice.

Father’s old account.

And the man to whom I had entrusted my protection for eleven years.

I looked at Mason.

“You shut down the system.”

“You understand now?”

“You arranged the attack too.”

“The attack was only a test. I wanted to find out where the box was kept and whether Claire knew how to protect the children.”

Claire slowly raised the gun.

“And if she did not?”

“Then the children would still remain alive. Losing them would force Grant to give up everything.”

Something collapsed inside my heart.

For eleven years I had placed myself in one man’s hands.

Mason moved toward the door.

“Move aside.”

“No.”

“I controlled your family while you were only your father’s shadow.”

“And Natalie?”

His face remained motionless.

“Natalie learned too much.”

“Did you kill her?”

“I only carried out the order.”

Those words hung in the room.

I had my phone in my pocket, and the recording had already begun. Claire noticed this but said nothing.

“Whose order?” I asked.

“Your father’s.”

“My father died four years ago.”

“The order had been given before that.”

“But you were there.”

Mason narrowed his eyes at me.

“Do you want to hear Natalie’s final minutes?”

He took out his phone, touched the screen, and a recording began in the room. For the first time I heard my own voice saying words I had never spoken.

“Give me the box, Natalie. If you resist me, I will take the children away from you too.”

My voice was so real that for several seconds I myself began to doubt myself.

Claire turned her head toward me.

“Were you saying this?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

I closed my eyes.

I remembered the night before Natalie’s death. How I was sitting in a hotel room, how Father was calling me, how he told me not to go home because Natalie was hysterical.

I did not go.

But someone used my voice.

The recording continued.

“Grant will not understand this,” my father said.

“If he does?” Mason asked.

“Then go after his children. A person who fears for his family is always controllable.”

Mason turned off the recording.

But it was already too late.

My phone had recorded everything.

“The police are on the way,” I said.

Mason laughed.

“The police are not faster than me.”

“The federal service is.”

Claire raised her phone. She had already made the call.

Sirens sounded outside.

For the first time Mason’s face turned pale.

He ran toward the window, but Claire blocked his way. He slammed into her, but Claire turned her body to the side and threw him onto the floor. The gun slid into the corner.

Mason tried to escape.

I put my hand on him.

“I am not punishing you in Natalie’s name,” I said. “I simply cannot protect you anymore.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

The door opened.

Federal agents entered and put handcuffs on Mason. He shouted that he had carried out my father’s orders, that the whole city had been bought with his family’s money, but no one was listening anymore.

Claire brought the children out of the hiding place.

Theo came to me immediately.

“Did the bad man leave?”

“Yes.”

“Did he hurt Mom too?”

I could not think of an answer.

Claire knelt in my place.

“He made a very bad choice a very long time ago.”

Theo looked at her.

“But you made a good choice.”

Claire lowered her eyes so the children would not see her tears.

That same night the calls did not stop.

My father’s former lawyer, Albert Reed, called me and told me that the recording had been obtained illegally.

“Grant, if you use this in court, you will lose everything.”

“I have already lost a lot.”

“Your company too.”

“It was not mine if its price was silence.”

The next day Albert withdrew from my case. He told me only one sentence:

“This family always had an heir, but for the first time it has a witness.”

And the main evidence turned out to be Natalie’s second recording. It was not waiting for us at the old station. There was only a small iron cabinet there, containing a letter from Daniel Mercer.

“If you are reading this, Claire devoted her life to your family. I am no longer alive. Natalie left the second recording for Claire because she knew Grant would believe the truth only when he heard it with his own ears.”

Claire held the letter in her hands.

“My father was killed,” she said.

“And you searched for answers alone.”

“Four years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me on the first day?”

She smiled bitterly.

“Because then you were protecting your father’s house. I did not know whether you were also part of him.”

I could not be angry with her.

In her place, I would have done the same.

Several weeks later the house resembled a pile of empty rooms. We removed the security cameras. We took down Father’s portraits. I transferred some of his companies to the state, and set aside the rest for the families who had suffered because of his crimes.

In Natalie’s room I left only one thing—her wooden comb.

And I gave the music box to Claire.

“This is your family’s truth,” I told her.

“No,” she answered. “This is the day your children were saved.”

“Then let it be for both.”

Three months later we moved to another city. The house was small, a cherry tree stood in the yard, and in the morning the smell of cinnamon came from the street bakery.

Claire continued working with children, this time under her own name. I opened a small construction firm and for the first time in my life had no one to protect except my children.

During the first week of school Theo drew a picture. Four people stood in front of a yellow house. A large sun was above them.

“This is us,” he told me.

“Who is the fifth?”

“Mom. She is in the sky, but she is still watching us.”

That evening we opened the music box. The silver bird slowly turned, and an old melody sounded in the room.

Claire stood by the window.

“Are you still afraid?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Me too.”

“Good. Fear reminds us that we are alive.”

Six months later Mason’s lawyer sent me a final letter. It said that my former head of security was asking for cooperation and offering me freedom in exchange for access to my father’s accounts.

I read the letter and wrote the answer myself.

“I no longer exchange anything for the freedom I have already won.”

Then I tore up the letter.

That same night a message arrived on my phone from an unknown number.

“You can start everything over. The children deserve a father. Come back.”

I knew whom it was from.

From Mason.

For several minutes I looked at the screen. The old Grant would probably have wanted to answer, threaten, or take revenge.

I sent only one word.

“No.”

Then I blocked the number.

In the morning the first snow came. Theo and Luke went into the yard and began building a small fortress in the snow. Claire poured tea in the kitchen.

I looked at the music box standing on the shelf.

The silver bird was no longer hidden.

It gleamed in the sunlight.

The melody sounded once and stopped.

This time no one in the house was afraid.

I left the music box open.