Chapter 2 - The Sanctum of the BossDaniel didn't take me to the service wing or the staff infirmary. He carried me directly into his private quarters on the third floor—a heavily guarded wing where even the senior housekeepers were forbidden to enter without his explicit permission.
The room was vast, lined with dark mahogany bookshelves, a roaring stone fireplace, and a massive king-sized bed covered in dark gray silk sheets.
He laid me down gently, pulling a plush velvet throw blanket over my shaking legs.
"Stay still," he commanded softly, resting a hand on my forehead for a brief second to test my temperature. "The doctor is already on his way."
Within seven minutes, Dr. Julian Hayes, the Carver family's private physician, rushed into the room carrying a heavy leather medical bag. He didn't ask questions about why the Chief of Emergency Medicine was treating a maid in the boss’s bed. He simply opened his kit and went to work.
"Her blood pressure is dangerously high, Daniel," Dr. Hayes reported after checking my vitals and running an ultrasound probe over my belly. "The stress triggered Braxton Hicks contractions, and there’s minor cervical stress. She needs absolute bed rest, fluid IVs, and zero stress for the next forty-eight hours, or she will go into premature labor."
"Fix it," Daniel said, standing by the fireplace with his hands buried deep in his trouser pockets. "Whatever she needs, you get it."
"I'm fine, Dr. Hayes," I whispered, trying to sit up, but the sharp pain in my pelvis forced me back down. "My shift... I have to finish..."
"Your shift ended the moment my coat went around your shoulders, Hannah," Daniel said, walking over to the side of the bed as Dr. Hayes hooked up a saline drip to my arm.
Once the doctor finished setting up the monitor and stepped out to prepare medication, the room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
The fire crackled softly in the hearth.
I looked up at Daniel. He stood over me, looking down at the jagged, butchered section of hair near my left temple where Claire’s scissors had cut down to the scalp.
"Why did you do that downstairs?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "You destroyed your own political engagement for a maid."
"Claire Whitlock is a vicious, spoiled sociopath whose family has been leeching off my shipping accounts for five years," Daniel replied coldly. "She thought she was cutting the hair of an helpless girl."
He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his dark eyes burning with an intense, unreadable light.
"She didn't know that the child inside you carries the blood of the man who saved my life."
My heart stopped beating for a full three seconds.
"What... what did you say?" I breathed, my lungs seizing up.
Daniel reached into his inner vest pocket and pulled out a worn, silver pocket watch. He opened the latch and held it out to me.
Inside the silver casing was a faded photograph of two young men standing on a wet dock, wearing grease-stained mechanic jumpsuits, smiling broadly at the camera.
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One was Daniel Carver, ten years younger.
The other was my late husband, Aaron.
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