Your head of security looked at you. “There’s audio in three zones,” he said quietly. “The lounge is one of them.” He reached out, tuned the channel, and suddenly the room was filled with Patricia’s voice, clear, sharp, and almost gleeful in its contempt.
“I’m not going to ask again,” she said. “You’ll stop eating in the kitchen like you’re staff children, and you won’t call her to bed anymore. It’s shameful.”
Daniela spoke first. —She reads to Martina because you never do.
The phrase hit you like a slap in the face because it came from your daughter, in your house, under your roof, with the firm tone of someone all too accustomed to disappointment. Patricia chuckled, not amused but offended. “I’m trying to help them become proper young ladies,” she said. “Not little brats clinging to the maid.”
“It’s not the maid,” Martina whispered. “It’s Rosa.”
Patricia slowly turned her head.
The silence before she answered was the kind adults use when they want children to understand that tenderness is gone. “And I am the woman your father chose,” she said. “You will speak to me with respect and stop behaving as if this house belongs to the cleaners.”
Behind you, beyond the partitions, an industrial refrigerator was whirring in the cellar.
You’d spent years in the acquisitions industry, where such large sums of money made men believe they understood power. But no merger, no hostile takeover, no struggle for control of the company had ever made your stomach churn like this. Not because Patricia was being harsh. You’d seen harshness. You weren’t naive. It was the rehearsed coldness that tore at you. It wasn’t a bad morning. It wasn’t stress. It was a system. A script you knew well enough to play out the moment your car pulled out the door.
Rosa cautiously stepped forward.
“Miss Patricia,” he said, “please don’t speak to them like that.”
The reaction was instantaneous. Patricia turned to face her with such obvious hatred that you gripped the edge of the console tightly. “You don’t correct me here,” she hissed. “You’re paid to clean counters, not to give your opinion.”
“I get paid to protect them when you’re cruel,” Daniela said.
That’s when the entire scene inside the monitor shattered.
Patricia turned to the girls. “What did you say?” Daniela lifted her chin, and for a terrible instant, you saw your late wife reflected in her so clearly it hurt your chest. “I said you’re mean when Dad’s gone,” she repeated. “And that you lie to him.” Martina jumped off the stool and ran to Rosa, clutching her apron with both hands like children cling to the last safe object in a storm.
Patricia’s face changed.
