After my wife Seraphina died days after giving birth to our twin sons, Leo and Noah, the Thorne estate became a mausoleum. I could run a billion-dollar empire, but I couldn’t soothe Leo’s relentless, painful cries. Doctors said colic. My sister-in-law, Beatrice, said it was my failure—while quietly pushing for control of my sons and their trust.
We hired Elena, a quiet nursing student who asked only to sleep in the nursery. Urged on by Beatrice’s suspicions, I filled the house with cameras, determined to catch Elena doing something wrong.
One night at 3 a.m., I checked the feed. Elena was awake, holding Leo skin-to-skin and humming a lullaby—one Seraphina had composed and never recorded. Then Beatrice entered and tried to put drops into Noah’s bottle. Elena stopped her. She had switched the bottles and discovered Beatrice had been sedating Leo to make him seem unfit, planning to gain guardianship. Elena revealed she’d been the nursing student present when Seraphina died—and that Seraphina had accused Beatrice of tampering with her IV. Elena had promised to protect the boys.
I rushed in as Beatrice lunged. The cameras caught everything. The police were already on their way.
Afterward, in the quiet nursery, I learned Elena knew the lullaby because Seraphina sang it every night in the hospital. Elena had changed her life to keep that promise.
I had built a fortress to find an enemy and nearly missed the guardian inside it. We later transformed the Thorne Trust into the Seraphina Foundation to protect children from exploitation.
Now we don’t watch the cameras. We sit together in the nursery and listen to the music Seraphina left behind.