Where is he going to?
The mansion had grown quiet. After a long evening of play in the garden, giggles, and bedtime stories, the quadruplets had finally surrendered to sleep. Chloe lingered in their nursery, smoothing Beauty’s hair and tucking Jamal’s blanket tighter around him. The room smelled of lavender oil from the diffuser, a scent she herself had chosen to calm restless nights.
For a moment, as she looked at the sleeping children, her chest swelled with a bittersweet warmth. They weren’t hers, not by blood, but over the last seven years, she had folded herself into their lives. She had bandaged scraped knees, listened to their secrets, and sung them to sleep on stormy nights. She wanted to believe it made her more than just a caretaker. She wanted to believe, desperately, that on
