Chapter 3 Welcome Home
Lily's POV
Mr. Gambino raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you can't do it?"
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
The honest answer was that I didn't know. What I did know was the stack of hospital bills on our kitchen counter. The way my mother had looked this morning, smaller somehow, like she was slowly folding into herself. The specific sound of her cough through the thin wall of our apartment at night, the one she tried to muffle so I wouldn't hear it.
I knew all of that and I knew what this salary meant against all of that.
But a teenage boy of my age In the same house!
"Sir, it's just that I — "
"I'll double your pay."
The words hit me somewhere behind the sternum and I couldn't help but stare at him.
The original salary had already felt unreal, more than I had made in months of working for the last family. Doubled, it was my mother's medication without counting coins first. It was the heating bill paid before the warning letter arrived. It was breathing room and we had not had breathing room in a very long time.
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
I could make this work, I justhave to make this work.
I was still steadying myself when the door creaked open behind me.
"Ah" Mr. Gambino looked past my shoulder. "My children"
The hairs on my skin rose as I turned around slowly, the sight made the ground shift beneath my feet
The little girl from the oak tree stood in the doorway, clean clothes, hair brushed, eyes finding mine instantly. The moment she saw me, something lit up in her face, it was relief or recognition, something almost like joy.
And beside her, filling the doorframe with his shoulders, staring at me like the universe had done this to him personally was Wade.
Every where became silent that you would definitely hear a pin drop.
I watched the shock move across his face in real time, the double take, the recognition, the disbelief before his expression hardened into something cold and set. His jaw tightened and his eyes swept the room and came back to me and stayed there, burning.
My heart was slamming so hard I was certain everyone could hear it, but I kept my face still.
"Dad" His voice came out low and controlled, which somehow made it worse. "What is she doing here?"
"She is your new nanny," Mr. Gambino said, with the unbothered calm of a man announcing the weather. "I told you both someone was starting today."
"No—"
"No—"
The word left both our mouths at the exact same moment. Wade turned to look at me sharply, as though even that was a provocation.
"Sir, I really don't think I can—" I tried speaking before Wade Interrupted me
"She cannot stay in this house." Wade stepped forward, his voice rising now, the careful control cracking. His eyes moved over me once, that same sweeping, dismissive look from the classroom, from the hallway, from every corridor I had made the mistake of existing in today. "A plus-size nerd is supposed to nanny me? Dad, are you even listening to yourself?"
The contempt in his voice was so effortless, and practiced, like I required absolutely nothing from him.
Something went very quiet inside me and then, underneath the quiet something else. Something that had been bent and bent and bent today and had finally found its limit. My anger rose from within and I wanted to show Wade that I too had power.
I turned to Mr. Gambino, my voice came out steadier than I had any right to "Sir I'll take the job."
The little girl moved so fast I barely saw it, she brought her phone out and was typing before I finished the sentence, holding the screen up to her father with both hands.
“Dad, I like her. Please let her stay.”
Mr. Gambino read it and nodded. His expression changed immediately but he looked at it for a moment longer than necessary. Then he looked at Wade
"Dad." All the contempt had drained from Wade's voice now. What replaced it was something rawer. "Please, Get someone else, Anyone else, You don't understand what she's like, she goes to my school, she's—"
"Alright," Mr. Gambino said quietly. "She goes"
Wade exhaled.
"And you forfeit the Elite Quarterback Camp."
The exhale stopped and silence followed.
I watched Wade's face go through several things in quick succession.
"That camp—" His voice cracked slightly on the word and he stopped and took in a deep breath "Dad, you know what that camp means. The scouts, the scholarship prospects, everything I've been working towards would all go?"
"I know exactly what it means," Mr. Gambino said. "Which is why I'm mentioning it" He tilted his head. "Do you have another option for me?"
Wade's mouth opened yet nothing came out.
I watched him stand there, this boy who had made my day a kind of hell, who had laughed when I hit the floor, who had just looked at me like I was something unpleasant he'd found on his shoe and I watched him run out of words. A smile of victory crept slowly into my face.
His eyes cut to mine and the hatred in them was so concentrated, so personal, that I felt it land like something physical.
I held his gaze quietly and steadily.
"Now you know what it feels like, I thought to have no good choices" I whispered to myself
"Seems like you have no options," Mr. Gambino said. He straightened his jacket and moved toward the hallway, done with the conversation in the way that powerful people are done with things completely and without ceremony.
"Sir" My voice stopped him and he turned.
"I have one question" I kept my tone professional, calm, even as my pulse ran fast beneath it. "If Wade disobeys a direct instruction or deliberately undermines me, what are my options?"
From behind me I heard a sharp sound, it was half laugh, half disbelief.
Mr. Gambino looked at his son for exactly one second, then back at me.
"Punish him accordingly," he said simply and left.
The room was very quiet, I could hear Wade breathing.
"What the fuckin hell-" he roared
I turned around slowly and let the smile come, this time it was not cruel, nor rushed, just real. The first fully real smile I had managed all day, which made it, under the circumstances, extraordinarily satisfying.
He stared at me and omething moved behind his eyes that I couldn't quite read, underneath it something more complicated that he buried quickly.
Suddenly a small hand slipped into mine and I looked down. The little girl was watching me with those wide, earnest eyes, her phone already raised.
"Welcome home" she typed
My smile softened into something that had nothing to do with Wade at all.
"Thank you," I said quietly, and I meant it more than she could know. Today had taken nearly everything I had. But standing here, her small hand in mine, the job secured, the salary doubled, I felt something fragile and stubborn flicker back to life somewhere in my chest.