The Millionaire’s Baby Cried When He Saw the Maid — And His First Words Broke Everyone’s Heart

Then it rose, sharp and sudden, a sound that cut through violin music and polite laughter like glass shattering.

Heads turned.

A murmur rippled through the ballroom.

Rodrigo’s body reacted before his mind could catch up. He crossed the marble floor in long strides, heart hammering, and scooped Mateo into his arms.

“Hey. Hey, buddy.” Rodrigo pressed his cheek to Mateo’s hair, breathing in the faint scent of baby shampoo. “What’s wrong?”

Mateo didn’t look at him.

The boy’s eyes were fixed over Rodrigo’s shoulder, wide with a kind of terror that didn’t belong in a room full of roses.

Rodrigo turned.

Near the service doors, half-shadowed by a pillar and a curtain of white linens, a housekeeping worker stood holding a trash bin. Simple uniform. Hair pulled back. Expression carefully neutral in the way staff were trained to be: present but invisible.

Adele Carter.

Rodrigo knew her only in fragments. The quiet woman who kept to the back hallways. The one who never spoke unless spoken to. The one whose name he’d learned because he made a point, after Camila’s death, to stop treating the people who ran his house like furniture.

Adele shifted her weight like she was about to retreat, as if she’d been caught somewhere she wasn’t allowed.

Mateo made a sound that wasn’t quite a sob and wasn’t quite breath.

Then he wriggled out of Rodrigo’s arms with startling strength and slid down.

Before Rodrigo could catch him, the boy ran across the marble floor.

Read more on next page