“You sit with them.”
He looked almost more alarmed by that than by the wrecked dining room.
“How often?”
“Twice a week minimum.”
Theo immediately said, “Five.”
Victor looked at Hannah.
“Three.”
“Done.”
Mrs.
Alvarez cleared her throat.
“Should I have that added to the employment agreement?”
Victor stared at her.
Mrs.
Alvarez’s expression remained perfectly professional.
Hannah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“Apparently,” Victor said, “everyone in this house has discovered collective bargaining.”
The job did not become easy after that night.
The boys were still six.
They still argued, tested limits, hid shoes, fought over bathroom turns, and occasionally treated the staircase like a racetrack despite repeated instructions that it was not one.
But the campaigns stopped.
When Mason became angry during Hannah’s second week, he marched into the kitchen and shouted, “I hate you!”
Hannah looked up from cutting apples.
“Okay.”
He waited.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“No.”
He stood there another few seconds, then asked for an apple slice.
Ethan moved into the mansion with Hannah after she completed the paperwork for the job.
The first meeting between five boys under eight was loud enough that Mrs.
Alvarez briefly reconsidered every life decision that had brought her to household management.
But Ethan understood something about the quadruplets before most adults did.
When they tested him, he did not disappear.
When they bossed him around, he argued back.
When Theo asked whether Ethan thought Hannah would leave someday, Ethan shrugged.
“My mom always comes back.”
Hannah heard that from the hallway and had to stand still for a moment before entering the room.
Her ex’s custody threat did not vanish because Victor Ralston was wealthy.
Hannah refused to let Victor turn it into another problem money could simply crush.
But stable employment changed the ground beneath her feet.
She had a permanent address.
Pay stubs.
A private bedroom for Ethan.
Reliable transportation to school.
She could finally respond to legal threats instead of being frightened by the cost of opening an envelope.
When formal paperwork eventually arrived, she took it to a family-law clinic and answered it properly.
Her ex no longer had poverty to use as proof that Hannah was unstable.
At the Ralston mansion, Victor kept his part of the bargain too.
Three dinners a week became four more often than not.
At first he arrived with his phone in his pocket and one eye on the time.
Hannah made him leave the phone outside.
The first time she told him that, all four boys froze, waiting to see whether their father would pull rank.
Victor stared at Hannah for two seconds.
Then he walked back into the hall and placed the phone on a console table.
Mason grinned for the rest of dinner.
