The rain in Seattle didn’t just fall; it haunted the glass panes of the Montalvo estate like the persistent tapping of a ghost. Sebastián Montalvo stood in the threshold of his own foyer, the heavy mahogany door clicking shut behind him with a finality that echoed through the cavernous, sterile marble hall.
He was a man defined by steel and glass, a titan of industry who had spent the last eighteen hours suspended in the pressurized silence of a private jet, hurtling across the Pacific from Shanghai. His tie was undone, a silk noose loosened at last, and his lungs felt tight, as if the air in his own home was too thin to breathe.
He had returned three days early. The negotiations had been ruthless, efficient, and ultimately hollow. He had won another several hundred million in maritime contracts, yet as he sat in the back of the town car watching the grey luminescence of the Pacific Northwest, a primal, uncurbed anxiety had clawed at his ribs. It was a phantom ache, a sense that the foundation of his life was eroding while he was busy gilding the roof.
The house was too quiet. It always was. Since Elena’s death two years ago, the mansion had transformed from a home into a museum of grief, curated by a rotating door of domestic staff who feared his shadow and detested his children’s rebellion.
Sebastián dropped his leather weekend bag on the marble. The thud was swallowed by the thick Persian rugs as he began the ascent up the grand staircase. He expected the usual: the sound of a television blaring to distract the boys, the harried weeping of a nanny on the verge of quitting, or the destructive crashing of toys against wainscoting.
He had hired seven nannies in eighteen months. Each had been a decorated professional with glowing resumes and cold eyes. Each had left claiming his sons—Diego, Mateo, and Santiago—were “unmanageable,” “wild,” or “spiritually broken.”
But as he reached the upper landing, he heard it. Not a scream, but a murmur. A low, melodic vibration that seemed to pull the very tension out of the walls.
He followed the sound to the nursery wing. The door to the boys’ playroom was slightly ajar, casting a warm, amber slice of light across the darkened hallway. Sebastián paused, his hand hovering over the brass handle. He felt like an intruder in his own life.
He peered through the gap.
The sight hit him with the force of a physical blow. The room, usually a battlefield of discarded blocks and expensive electronics, was bathed in the soft glow of a single floor lamp. On the deep blue carpet, Valeria—the woman he had hired in a fit of desperation four weeks ago—was kneeling. Her black uniform was crisp, her white apron a sharp contrast against the shadows, but it was her posture that arrested him. She wasn’t standing over them like a warden; she was among them.
The triplets, his three firebrands, were kneeling in a semi-circle around her. Their small, restless hands were clasped. Their eyes—usually darting with mischief or clouded with the defiant sorrow of motherless children—were closed.
“Thank you for this day,” Valeria whispered. Her voice had the quality of cello strings, resonant and grounding.
“Thank you for this day,” the three boys repeated. Their voices, usually a chaotic discord, rose in a fragile, perfect unison.
Sebastián felt his knees weaken. He leaned against the doorframe, the cold wood pressing into his shoulder.
“Thank you for the food that nourishes us and the roof that shelters us,” Valeria continued, her head bowed.
“Thank you for the food… and the roof,” the boys echoed.
Sebastián closed his eyes for a moment. He realized, with a sharp pang of shame, that he hadn’t prayed with them since the funeral. He hadn’t even eaten with them in months. He provided the roof; he provided the food; but he had forgotten to provide the gratitude. He had been a provider of things and a ghost of a father.
“Now,” Valeria said, her tone shifting to something more intimate, “tell God what made you happy today.”
Silence stretched for a heartbeat. In the past, this question would have been met with demands for toys or complaints about lessons.
Diego, the eldest by six minutes and the most prone to rage, opened one eye, glanced at his brothers, and then squeezed it shut again. “It made me happy when Valeria taught me how to bake cookies,” he said, his voice small, stripped of its usual armor. “The kitchen smelled like sugar. Not like… nothing.”
“It made me happy to play in the garden,” Mateo added, his shoulders relaxing. “We found a toad. Valeria said he was a prince waiting for a story.”
Then came Santiago. The youngest. The one who had stopped speaking for three months after the accident. The one who still woke up screaming so loud the neighbors could hear him.
“It made me happy,” Santiago whispered, “that I’m not afraid at night anymore.”
The words were a dagger to Sebastián’s heart. He had spent thousands on high-tech nightlights, security systems, and child psychologists to cure that fear. And here was this woman, sitting on a carpet in a simple uniform, doing what his millions could not.
His grip failed. His heavy briefcase slipped from his numb fingers and hit the hardwood of the hallway with a resonant thwack.
The spell broke. Valeria’s eyes snapped open—dark, intelligent, and instantly alert. She didn’t jump; she rose with a fluid, grounded grace that suggested a deep inner stillness. Across the room, her gaze locked onto his. For a heartbeat, the billionaire and the nanny existed in a vacuum, a silent exchange of shock and recognition.
“Dad!” Mateo broke the silence, his face lighting up with a primal joy that made Sebastián’s throat ache.
The boys scrambled to their feet, the solemnity of the moment dissolving into the beautiful chaos of childhood. They surged toward him, a sea of small limbs and pajama-clad warmth. Sebastián dropped to his knees, catching them in his arms. He buried his face in Santiago’s hair, smelling the faint scent of flour and lavender soap.
“You’re home! You’re home!” Diego shouted, tugging at his father’s expensive wool coat.
“I finished early,” Sebastián managed to say, his voice a jagged wreck. He looked up over the heads of his sons.
Valeria stood by the window, her hands folded over her apron. She looked like a painting from a different century—steadfast, humble, yet possessing a quiet authority that commanded the room.
“Mr. Montalvo,” she said softly. “We weren’t expecting you until Friday. I would have had the kitchen prepare something.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head as he stood up, the boys still clinging to his legs like anchors. “No, please. Don’t change anything.”
He looked around the room. It was different. The air felt heavier, more substantial. The boys looked… healthy. Not just physically, but as if their souls had been watered.
“What were you doing?” Sebastián asked, though he knew. He wanted to hear her say it.
“We were just finishing our day, sir,” Valeria replied. She didn’t flinch under his intense scrutiny. “A bit of reflection. It helps the transition to sleep. It settles the heart.”
“I haven’t heard them this quiet in two years,” Sebastián said. He stepped further into the room, feeling the strangeness of the blue carpet beneath his Italian leather shoes. “Seven people tried to settle their hearts, Valeria. They all quit.”
“They were trying to manage them, Mr. Montalvo,” she said, a small, knowing smile touching the corners of her mouth. “I am only trying to love them.”
The simplicity of the statement silenced him. It was a rebuke, intentional or not, of everything he had been doing. He had been managing his family like a merger. He had been looking for ROI in his children’s behavior.
Santiago reached up and took Sebastián’s hand. The boy’s skin was warm, his grip firm. “Do you want to pray with us, Dad?”
The question hung in the air, heavy with the weight of years of neglect. Sebastián looked at Valeria. He saw the way she looked at his sons—not as a job, not as a paycheck, but as a sacred trust. In that moment, the cold, calculated walls he had built around his heart began to crack. He didn’t just see a nanny. He saw the missing piece of a puzzle he had been too proud to admit was broken.
“Yes,” Sebastián said, his voice finally finding its strength. “Yes, I would like that very much.”
He knelt back down on the floor, ignoring the crease in his trousers and the dust on his knees. He reached out his hands. Diego took one, Mateo the other. Valeria hesitated for a second, then knelt back into the circle, completing the chain.
As they closed their eyes and the rain continued its rhythmic drumming against the glass, Sebastián didn’t think about the contracts in Shanghai or the stock market opening in New York. For the first time in a long time, he felt the roof over his head and the air in his lungs. He felt the warmth of his children’s hands.
He was home. And as he stole a glance at Valeria, whose head was bowed in silver light, he realized that his unannounced arrival hadn’t just revealed the state of his children—it had revealed the state of his own soul. He had come home to check on his investments, but he stayed to save his life.
The darkness outside was absolute, but inside the nursery, for the first time since the lights had gone out two years ago, it was finally morning.
The following evening, the silence that usually suffocated the dining room was replaced by the rhythmic clinking of silverware and the low, hesitant murmur of a family trying to remember how to be one.
Sebastián sat at the head of the table—a sprawling slab of polished obsidian that had always felt more like a boardroom than a place of nourishment. For years, he had eaten here alone, lit only by the cold blue glow of his tablet as he scanned global markets. Tonight, the tablet was face down in the foyer.
Valeria moved through the shadows of the dining room with a quiet, practiced efficiency. She didn’t hover like the previous staff, who had always seemed terrified of making a sound. She moved with purpose. She had prepared a simple roast chicken with root vegetables—peasant food, really, compared to the Michelin-starred catering Sebastián usually ordered. But the scent of rosemary and garlic had seeped into the very fibers of the curtains, making the mansion feel, for the first time, like a dwelling.
“Is it okay, Dad?” Mateo asked, staring at a glazed carrot as if it were a strange artifact. “Valeria let us help peel them. I didn’t cut my finger once.”
Sebastián took a bite. The flavors were earthy and honest. “It’s the best thing I’ve eaten in years, Mateo.”
He looked toward the sideboard, where Valeria was quietly refilling a water carafe. “Valeria, please. There is more than enough. Join us.”
She paused, the glass carafe mid-air. The light from the chandelier caught the sharp line of her cheekbones. “That wouldn’t be appropriate, Mr. Montalvo. I am here to serve.”
“You are here to care for my sons,” Sebastián corrected, his voice carrying a weight that made the boys look up. “And they are currently eating. If you are part of their lives, you are part of this table. Sit.”
It wasn’t a request; it was an executive order, softened by a flicker of something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before: vulnerability.
Valeria hesitated, then set the carafe down. She pulled out a chair next to Santiago. As she sat, the energy in the room shifted. The boys immediately leaned toward her, a physical manifestation of the gravity she held in their world.
“Tell Dad the story,” Santiago whispered, tugging at Valeria’s sleeve. “The one about the mountain that learned to cry.”
Valeria glanced at Sebastián, a momentary flush of color rising to her neck. “I’m sure your father has much more important things to discuss than fairy tales, Santiago.”
“On the contrary,” Sebastián said, leaning back. “I’ve spent the last decade discussing logistics, shipping lanes, and interest rates. I think a crying mountain is exactly what I need to hear about.”
As Valeria began to speak—a folk tale from her village in the Pyrenees about a stone giant whose heart turned to a spring—Sebastián found himself watching her instead of the children. He noticed the way her hands moved when she talked, graceful and expressive, and how she never once looked at the clock. The previous nannies had lived by the stopwatch, counting the seconds until their shift ended. Valeria lived in the moment, as if time were a resource she had in infinite supply.
But as the story reached its climax, a sharp, intrusive buzz cut through the atmosphere.
Sebastián’s work phone, left in his jacket pocket draped over a nearby chair, was vibrating. The screen flashed a name: Holloway – London. It was his lead counsel. The Shanghai deal was hitting a snag in the late-night European markets.
The boys froze. They knew that sound. It was the sound that usually meant their father would stand up, apologize, and disappear into his study for the next six hours.
Sebastián looked at the jacket. He felt the old pull—the adrenaline of the hunt, the structural necessity of his empire. He looked at Valeria. She wasn’t looking at the phone; she was looking at him, her dark eyes steady, judging not his success, but his choice.
Sebastián reached into his pocket. He pulled out the phone.
The boys’ faces fell, a synchronized masks of disappointment they had practiced since they could walk.
Sebastián didn’t answer it. He held the power button down until the screen went black, then placed it face-down on the table.
“The giant,” Sebastián said, his voice steady. “You said his heart turned to water. What happened to the village at the foot of the mountain?”
A collective breath escaped the triplets. Valeria’s expression softened, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips—a look of genuine approval that felt more rewarding to Sebastián than any signed contract.
“The village was saved,” she said softly. “But only because the mountain realized that being strong didn’t mean being made of stone.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blurred warmth that Sebastián would later struggle to describe. He helped Valeria clear the plates—an act that would have scandalized his domestic agency—and then he followed the procession upstairs for the bedtime ritual.
He watched as she tucked them in, her movements rhythmic and soothing. She didn’t just pull the blankets up; she smoothed them, whispered a specific blessing to each boy, and kissed their foreheads. When she reached Santiago, the boy didn’t reach for his stuffed bear. He reached for her hand.
“Are you staying?” Santiago asked, his eyes heavy with sleep.
“I am right outside,” she whispered.
“Is Dad staying?”
Sebastián stepped into the light of the doorway. “I’m staying, San. I’m right here.”
Ten minutes later, the hallway was silent. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning and the distant rain. Valeria stepped out of the nursery, closing the door with a click so soft it was almost silent.
She found Sebastián leaning against the opposite wall, his shirt sleeves rolled up, looking less like a billionaire and more like a man who had survived a long war.
“They’re asleep,” she said.
“Without a single tear,” he remarked. “How do you do it, Valeria? Really. What is the secret?”
She leaned against the railing, looking down into the dark foyer. “There is no secret, Mr. Montalvo. Your children were starving. Not for food, or toys, or stability. They were starving for a witness. Someone to see who they are, not what they represent.”
Sebastián took a step closer. The air between them grew thick, charged with the sudden, terrifying proximity of two strangers who had just shared a profound intimacy. “I’ve spent my whole life building things that last. Bridges, companies, legacies. But I realize now… I’ve built a fortress with no one inside.”
“The fortress has windows,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You just have to be willing to open them.”
He looked at her then, really looked at her. He saw the fatigue in her eyes, the strength in her posture, and the undeniable mystery of her. He knew nothing of her life before she arrived at his gates. He knew nothing of why a woman with her poise and depth was working as a domestic.
“Who are you, Valeria?” he asked.
Before she could answer, the heavy front door downstairs groaned open. A cold draft swept up the stairs.
“Sebastián? Darling? Are you home? I saw the car!”
The voice was sharp, high-pitched, and laced with a proprietary entitlement that made the hair on the back of Sebastián’s neck stand up.
It was Isabella. His late wife’s sister. The woman who had been campaigning for a year to fill the void Elena had left—not just in the house, but in his bed.
Valeria’s face immediately shuttered. The warmth vanished, replaced by the professional mask of the nanny. She stepped back, creating a cavernous distance between them.
“Your guest has arrived, sir,” she said, her voice turning formal and cold. “I will be in my quarters if the children wake.”
She turned and vanished into the shadows of the servant’s wing just as Isabella appeared at the bottom of the stairs, draped in wet mink and smelling of expensive gin and desperation.
Sebastián stood in the dark hallway, his heart still echoing the rhythm of a story about a mountain, feeling as though he had just been cast out of a dream and back into a nightmare.
The shadows of the hallway seemed to lengthen as Isabella ascended the stairs, her heels clicking like a metronome against the marble. She was the antithesis of the stillness Sebastián had just discovered—all sharp edges, polished silver, and the frantic energy of a socialite who viewed life as a series of acquisitions.
“Sebastián, you’re brooding in the dark again,” Isabella said, reaching the landing. She didn’t wait for an invitation; she leaned in, her perfume—a heavy, cloying jasmine—choking out the lingering scent of Valeria’s rosemary. She pressed a cold, painted cheek against his. “I heard from the firm you’d returned early. I assumed you’d be at the club, not hiding in the nursery wing.”
“I wasn’t hiding, Isabella,” Sebastián said, his voice flat. He looked past her, toward the darkened door where Valeria had disappeared. The peace of the last hour felt like a thin porcelain vase that Isabella had just shattered. “I was with my sons.”
Isabella let out a sharp, melodic laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “How noble. Though, from what I hear, you’ve left that to the help. Speaking of which…” She paused, her eyes narrowing as she glanced toward the servant’s wing. “I saw her. The new one. She’s a bit… somber, isn’t she? Not exactly the lively influence the boys need.”
“She is exactly what they need,” Sebastián replied, his tone hardening. “They are sleeping, Isabella. For the first time in two years, they are actually sleeping.”
Isabella’s smile faltered, replaced by a calculating glint. She smoothed her mink coat, her eyes roaming Sebastián’s face with a predatory familiarity. “Is she? Or is she just good at creating an illusion? You know, Sebastián, I did a little digging. After the disaster with the last nanny—the one you hired from that prestigious London agency—I thought I’d do you a favor and look into this ‘Valeria.'”
A cold knot formed in Sebastián’s stomach. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know, darling. You’re far too busy conquering the world to worry about who is whispering in your children’s ears at night.” She reached into her clutch and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “She didn’t come from an agency, did she? She just… appeared. A referral from a distant contact in Spain.”
“She had excellent references,” Sebastián said, though he realized with a jolt of unease that he hadn’t scrutinized them himself. He had been too tired, too broken, and then too impressed by the results.
“References can be bought, Sebastián. But a past is harder to bury.” Isabella handed him the paper. “Her name isn’t just Valeria. It’s Valeria de la Vega. Her family owned one of the largest vineyard estates in Rioja before the scandal. Her husband didn’t just ‘pass away’—he died in a crash while fleeing an embezzlement investigation. They lost everything. She didn’t come here to be a nanny; she came here to hide from the creditors and the shame.”
Sebastián stared at the paper. It was a printout of a Spanish news article from three years ago. There was a photo—grainy, but unmistakable. Valeria, looking younger, dressed in silk, her hair styled with an elegance that matched the mansion they currently stood in. She wasn’t a servant. she was a fallen queen.
“She’s a fraud, Sebastián,” Isabella whispered, stepping closer, her hand resting on his arm. “She’s using your house as a sanctuary. She’s not teaching your sons ‘peace’; she’s teaching them how to hide. You need to get rid of her before her past follows her through that front door.”
Sebastián looked at the photo, then at the closed door of the nursery. He thought of the way she had knelt on the carpet. He thought of Santiago saying he wasn’t afraid anymore. Was the peace he had witnessed just the desperate performance of a woman trying to earn her keep in a world that had rejected her?
“Go home, Isabella,” Sebastián said, his voice a low vibration of suppressed emotion.
“Sebastián—”
“Go home. Now.”
He didn’t wait for her to leave. He turned and walked down the hall, his footsteps heavy. He didn’t go to his master suite. He walked straight to the servant’s wing and knocked on the small, plain door at the end of the corridor.
It opened almost instantly. Valeria stood there, still in her uniform, but she had let her hair down. It fell in dark, wavy rivers over her shoulders, making her look even more like the woman in the photograph. She saw the paper in his hand, and the blood drained from her face.
“Is it true?” Sebastián asked, holding up the article.
Valeria didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry. She simply stood taller, a tragic dignity radiating from her. “Which part, Mr. Montalvo? That my husband was a thief? Or that I lost a life I never wanted anyway?”
“You lied about who you were.”
“I lied about my name,” she said softly. “I never lied about my heart. I never lied to your sons. I came here because I had nothing left, and I found three little boys who also had nothing left—despite all the gold in this house.”
“You’re a fugitive,” he said, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.
“I am a mother who lost her own child in that crash, Sebastián,” she whispered, her voice breaking for the first time. “I have no creditors left. I gave them every cent, every grape, every stone of the estate to pay for my husband’s sins. I came here to be invisible. To find a way to breathe again.”
She looked at him then, her eyes swimming with a mixture of defiance and sorrow. “If you want me to leave, I will go. But do not tell me I am a fraud. I have given your sons more of myself in four weeks than you have given them in two years.”
The truth of her words hit him harder than the scandal ever could. He looked at the article, then slowly, deliberately, he tore it in half. Then again. And again. The scraps of paper fluttered to the floor like the rain outside.
“Isabella is gone,” Sebastián said, his voice thick. “And tomorrow, we are going to the garden. Mateo wants to show me the toad. And I want you to tell me more about that mountain.”
Valeria leaned against the doorframe, a single tear finally escaping. “Why?”
Sebastián reached out, his hand hovering near her face before he finally found the courage to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The contact was electric, a bridge built over a chasm of grief.
“Because,” he said, “I think I’m tired of being made of stone, too.”
The following morning, the Seattle sky was a bruised purple, the rain finally relenting to a thick, low-hanging mist. The mansion, which had for so long felt like a mausoleum of cold marble and echoing silence, hummed with a different frequency.
Sebastián did not go to the office. He sat in the breakfast nook, a space usually reserved for the staff, watching Valeria teach Diego how to crack an egg. The boy’s tongue was poked out in concentration, his small brow furrowed. When the shell splintered perfectly, he let out a jagged crow of triumph.
“Look, Dad! I didn’t get any crunchy parts in!”
“Perfect execution, Diego,” Sebastián said, though his eyes remained on Valeria.
She was different today. The revelation of her past had stripped away the subservient mask. She wore the uniform, but she carried herself with the quiet gravity of a woman who had survived the end of her world and decided to build a new one. There was an unspoken pact between them now—a shared understanding of loss that bridged the gap between his billions and her wreckage.
But the world outside was not finished with them.
The disruption came at noon. A black sedan, not Sebastián’s, pulled into the circular driveway. Isabella sat in the back, her face a mask of cold fury, accompanied by a man in a sharp, slate-grey suit—a private investigator Sebastián recognized from his own corporate dealings.
Sebastián met them on the portico, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “I thought I made myself clear, Isabella.”
“You made your delusions clear, Sebastián,” she snapped, stepping out of the car. The mist clung to her hair like a web. “You are harboring a woman associated with international fraud. This is Marcus. He’s confirmed that while she may have paid her husband’s debts, the Spanish authorities still have questions regarding certain ‘missing’ assets from the De la Vega estate. If she’s found here, your name goes down with hers.”
The man, Marcus, stepped forward, holding a digital tablet. “Mr. Montalvo, it’s not just the money. The family of her late husband is filing for a restorative inquiry. They believe she fled with more than just a change of clothes. If she stays in this house, you are obstructing a foreign investigation.”
Sebastián looked through the glass of the front door. In the foyer, Valeria stood holding Santiago’s hand. She had seen the car. She knew. Her face was pale, but her eyes were resigned. She began to reach for her coat, the universal gesture of a woman used to running.
“Isabella,” Sebastián said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low vibration. “You think you’re protecting Elena’s memory. You think you’re protecting this family. But you haven’t looked at those boys in two years. You look at them and see heirs. You look at me and see a portfolio.”
“I see a man being conned!” Isabella cried.
“I see a man being saved,” Sebastián countered.
He turned his back on them and walked into the house, locking the door behind him. The sound of the deadbolt clicking home echoed through the hall.
He walked straight to Valeria. She was already shaking her head, a suitcase she had never fully unpacked sitting by her feet.
“I won’t let you lose everything because of me,” she whispered. “The boys… they love you. They don’t need a scandal.”
“The boys don’t need a billionaire,” Sebastián said, stopping inches from her. “They need a father. And I need the woman who showed me how to be one.”
“They will come back with warrants, Sebastián. Isabella won’t stop.”
“Let them,” he said. He reached out, taking her hands in his. They were calloused from work, warm, and real. “I own the shipping lanes they’d use to extradite you. I own the firms that would prosecute you. I have spent my life building walls to keep people out. For the first time, I am using them to keep someone in.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice a fragile thread.
“Because Santiago isn’t afraid of the dark anymore,” he said, his voice cracking. “And neither am I.”
The Resolution
The legal battle that followed was a quiet, scorched-earth campaign. Sebastián Montalvo did not use his wealth to buy a win; he used it to buy the truth. He hired the finest investigators in Madrid to prove what Valeria had claimed: that she had been the victim of her husband’s shadow life, not a participant in it. He cleared her name, not as an act of charity, but as an act of devotion.
Isabella was barred from the estate, her influence withered by the cold light of the facts Sebastián unearthed about her own attempts to siphon from the boys’ trust funds.
Six months later, the rain was falling again, but it sounded different now. It sounded like music.
The Montalvo mansion was no longer a museum. There were flour stains on the marble counters in the kitchen. There were wooden toads carved by Mateo sitting on the obsidian dining table.
Sebastián sat on the floor of the nursery, his suit jacket discarded, his sleeves rolled up. Diego and Mateo were perched on his back, laughing as they tried to “tame the giant.”
Valeria sat by the window, no longer in a black uniform, but in a soft cream sweater that caught the amber light of the lamps. She wasn’t the nanny anymore. She was the anchor.
Santiago sat in her lap, a book open between them. He looked up at his father, his eyes bright and clear.
“Dad?”
“Yes, San?”
“Are we going to say the thank-yous tonight?”
Sebastián looked at Valeria. The sun was setting over the Sound, casting long, golden shadows across the room. He felt a peace so profound it was almost painful—a realization that the greatest acquisition of his life was the one he couldn’t put a price on.
“Yes,” Sebastián said, reaching out to take Valeria’s hand as the boys gathered around. “We have a lot to be thankful for.”
The billionaire, the fallen queen, and the three boys who had brought them together closed their eyes. Outside, the world continued its frantic, greedy spin, but inside the circle, the mountain had finally stopped crying, and the spring was deep, and clear, and permanent.
