Days five and six arrived with brutal heat.
Even the Costa estate, built of stone, steel, and glass above the cliffs, seemed restless beneath the late-summer sun.
Air-conditioning hummed nonstop.
Security guards grew impatient.
Kitchen staff argued.
And Beatrice had one of her worst mornings.
Damian was in a meeting when his phone vibrated.
Not a call.
An alert.
EAST WING — ROOM 104.
He stopped listening immediately.
Three men sat across from him discussing a problem at the docks.
One was still talking.
Damian raised a hand.
The room fell silent.
"Leave."
"Boss, we haven't finished—"
"I said leave."
Nobody argued twice.
Damian walked quickly to the basement bunker.
By the time he reached the monitors, Beatrice was screaming.
His mother's bedroom looked as though a storm had torn through it.
A glass pitcher had smashed against the wall.
Water soaked the rug.
Fragments glittered across the hardwood.
Beatrice was pressed against the headboard, eyes huge, fighting something nobody else could see.
Damian knew enough about her illness to understand.
She was not in Room 104 anymore.
Not really.
Maybe she was thirty years in the past.
Maybe she was reliving the night Damian's father died.
Maybe a nurse's face had become the face of an enemy.
Two medical staff members stood outside the doorway.
Neither entered.
Damian slammed his palm against the desk.
"Do something."
They couldn't hear him.
Then Tessa appeared.
She ran down the hall without her housekeeping cart.
One nurse caught her arm.
"Don't."
Tessa pulled free.
"What happened?"
"She just snapped."
"How long has she been like this?"
"Ten minutes."
Tessa stared at the nurse.
"Ten minutes?"
"She nearly hit me with the pitcher!"
Tessa stepped into the room.
Damian's pulse jumped.
"No."
He reached for the intercom.
Then stopped when Tessa spoke.
"Mrs. Costa."
Beatrice screamed.
Tessa took another step.
"Beatrice."
His mother grabbed the brass clock from her nightstand.
Damian rose from the chair.
"Get out."
Again, nobody heard him.
Beatrice threw it.
The clock missed Tessa's head by less than an inch.
It struck the wall with a violent crack.
Tessa flinched.
But she did not leave.
She moved closer.
"Beatrice, look at me."
The older woman kicked at the blankets.
Her breaths came in sharp, terrified bursts.
Tessa lowered herself.
There was broken glass everywhere.
Damian saw it.
Surely Tessa saw it too.
Yet she dropped to her knees.
Glass cracked beneath her.
His hand tightened around the desk edge.
Tessa lifted both hands, palms visible.
"It's loud in your head today, isn't it?"
Her voice trembled.
That detail struck Damian harder than anything else.
She was afraid.
This wasn't reckless courage born from ignorance.
Tessa understood she could be hurt.
She stayed anyway.
"It's just noise," she said softly. "You're here with me. Nobody's coming through that door. You're safe."
Beatrice froze.
"Safe," Tessa repeated.
His mother stared at her.
Seconds passed.
The rage drained away.
Beatrice's face crumpled.
And she began to cry.
Not scream.
Cry.
Tessa moved forward.
Beatrice collapsed against her.
Tessa wrapped both arms around the older woman and held her.
Damian sat back slowly.
The sight affected him in a way violence never did.
He had watched men beg.
He had watched enemies betray lifelong friends to survive.
He had spent years teaching himself not to react.
Yet this—
His mother sobbing into the shoulder of a maid—
made his chest ache.
Tessa rocked her gently.
"You're okay."
Beatrice clutched the back of her uniform.
"Don't leave."
Tessa's eyes closed.
"I'm right here."
Damian zoomed the camera.
That was when he saw the blood.
A bright line ran from Tessa's hand to her wrist.
A shard of glass must have sliced her palm when she knelt.
More blood darkened the gray fabric around her knee.
She didn't seem to notice.
Or she didn't care.
For nearly twenty minutes, she held Beatrice.
Eventually, exhaustion won.
The older woman's grip loosened.
She fell asleep.
Tessa carefully lowered her onto the pillows.
She adjusted the blanket.
Then she stood.
Damian expected her to call a nurse.
Instead, Tessa began picking up the larger pieces of glass.
With one hand.
The other continued bleeding.
"What the hell are you doing?" Damian muttered.
She carried the pieces to the trash.
Then went into the bathroom.
The camera angle barely caught her reflection.
Tessa ran water over the cut.
Winced.
Opened a cabinet.
Empty.
No proper bandages.
She looked toward the door.
Apparently unwilling to bother anyone, she grabbed brown paper towels.
Wrapped them around her palm.
Secured them with a rubber band.
Then returned to cleaning.
Damian was on his feet before he realized it.
He took two steps toward the bunker door.
Stopped.
What was he going to do?
Walk upstairs?
Take her hand?
Ask whether she was hurt when he already knew the answer?
He stared at the screen.
Tessa finished cleaning the room.
One nurse finally entered.
"Oh my God. Your hand."
Tessa shrugged.
"It's fine."
"You should report that."
"For what?"
"Workers' compensation. At least go get it looked at."
"I have another hallway to finish."
"You're bleeding."
Tessa glanced at the paper towels.
"I've had worse."
The nurse laughed nervously.
"You're crazy."
Tessa looked at Beatrice.
"No. She's scared."
The nurse's smile disappeared.
Tessa lowered her voice.
"She's not trying to ruin your day. She doesn't know what day she's in."
Damian sat completely still.
No accusation.
No performance.
Tessa simply said it as truth.
That evening, he called Paul.
"Who was assigned to the east wing medical cabinet?"
Paul answered.
"Fire her."
There was a pause.
"Because the cabinet was empty?"
"Because a bleeding employee wrapped her hand in paper towels in a house where I'm paying enough for a private hospital."
"Understood."
"And get a physician to look at Tessa."
"Want me to tell her you ordered it?"
"No."
Paul almost smiled.
Almost.
"Of course not."
Damian looked at him.
Paul's face returned to stone.
The doctor told Tessa it was not serious.
Several cuts.
Nothing requiring stitches.
She came to work the next morning anyway.
Day 7.
Damian had slept badly.
He kept remembering Beatrice's words.
Don't leave.
His mother had said those words to him once.
He had been nine years old.
After his father was killed, Damian woke one night and found Beatrice sitting at the kitchen table in darkness.
She had looked smaller than he had ever seen her.
"Don't leave me too," she had whispered.
He hadn't.
Not then.
Later, life changed him.
Violence made distance useful.
Power made softness dangerous.
He gave Beatrice everything money could buy.
A mansion.
Doctors.
Security.
But somewhere along the way, he had stopped giving her the one thing she might have needed most.
His presence.
And now a maid had done what he had failed to do.
By midafternoon, Damian could no longer tolerate the monitors.
He left the bunker.
Paul saw him in the hallway.
"Going somewhere?"
Damian ignored him.
He climbed the stairs to the east wing.
At 2:15 p.m., he reached Room 104.
The door was open a few inches.
Tessa's voice floated through.
"So the mechanic looks at me and says the alternator is going too."
A pause.
"I don't even know what an alternator does, Beatrice."
Fabric rustled.
"If he told me the car needed a new flux capacitor, I'd probably believe him."
Beatrice made a sound.
Was she laughing?
Tessa laughed too.
"Exactly. We're doomed."
Damian stopped outside.
His reflection stared back from a mirror across the hall.
Tailored black suit.
Hard eyes.
A shoulder holster beneath the jacket.
A man people feared.
Inside the bedroom sat a woman who apparently feared almost nothing except losing people she loved.
For the first time in years, Damian Costa felt uncertain about crossing a doorway inside his own home.
He lifted his hand.
Then heard Tessa say something that froze him.
"You know, your son looks angry in every picture."
Damian's eyes narrowed.
Beatrice murmured something too quiet for him to catch.
Tessa answered.
"I'm sure he loves you."
Damian forgot to breathe.
"People don't build a fortress around somebody they don't care about."
Silence.
Then Tessa added quietly:
"But sometimes protecting someone isn't the same as being with them."
Damian's hand dropped.
The words cut deeper than any insult.
He could have entered.
Instead, Damian stood outside Room 104 and listened to the first person in years who wasn't afraid of him tell his mother a truth he had been unwilling to tell himself.