Part 1After the ICU

My son had a febrile seizure from a high fever. I rushed home to find the apartment at 115°F. The nanny, claiming to be cold-sensitive, had refused to use the AC. My son was rushed to the ICU.

I slapped her, paid her severance, and fired her.

That night, my husband Michael came home accusing me: “Lara! Was it worth giving Nina a chill by running the AC? She’s now hospitalized because of you!”

I shoved the video of our son’s resuscitation in his face. “It might not kill me, but it could’ve killed our son! If a grown woman can’t handle 38 minutes of AC, why is she a nanny?!”

Michael softened instantly. “Okay, you’re right. My fault.”

Everything seemed normal until our son’s fever spiked again.

Michael pretended to take us to the hospital but flew us via private helicopter and dumped us in the Arctic.

With his arm around Nina, he laughed down at me: “Cold air helps fever, right? Play doctor today! Enjoy the climate!”

Calmly, I texted the only number that mattered:

【Come take out the trash.】

* * *

The message had barely been sent when one of Michael’s goons let out a triumphant shout.

“Boss, she did it again! Just like you said, she’s texting her brother. Good thing we brought the signal jammer!”

Michael glanced at my screen and sneered. “Lara, when are you going to grow out of this pathetic habit of running to your big brother every time there’s a problem? It’s disgusting, you know that?”

He mocked the words on my screen. “‘Come take out the trash!’ Ooh, so tough. I’m so scared.”

His cronies pointed at me, howling with laughter. “You’re gonna listen to the boss today! With this jammer on, you can’t even send a period!”

Michael looked pleased. He draped a lavish fur coat over Nina’s shoulders and glared down at me, huddled with our son. “Lara, have you learned your lesson yet?”

I was only in a thin silk nightgown. The -50 degree air was already making my body convulse with shivers. My son’s lips were turning a frightening shade of blue, his tiny body trembling violently in my arms.

I clutched him tighter. “Michael, what lesson is there to learn?!” I shrieked, my voice raw against the wind. “It’s my house! My AC! Our son was having a seizure! He could have died! I showed you the ICU video, are you blind?!”

A gust of wind tore across the ice, feeling like a thousand tiny knives on my exposed skin. My son let out a piercing, agonized wail.

I stumbled toward the helicopter, waving my arms frantically. “Michael, you know his condition! If he keeps crying like this, you know what will happen!”

His expression flickered. His reckless lifestyle before we had a child had resulted in our son being born with a congenital lung defect. The doctors had warned us repeatedly to keep him from crying excessively, as it posed a risk of suffocation. Michael had even quit drinking and smoking for him. He’d once beaten a previous nanny and put her in the hospital just for letting our son cry for two minutes during a diaper change.

And now? For Nina, he was willing to risk our son’s life.

Seeing his hesitation, I pressed on. “Michael, please…”

“Michael, honey, let’s just bring her up,” Nina interrupted, her voice a delicate murmur. She snuggled deeper into his arms, her eyes glistening with fake tears. “I’m fine. So what if I almost collapsed from a chill? It’s not important. We shouldn’t let Lara and the baby suffer because of me…”

She paused, then added slyly, “Besides, you shouldn’t worry too much, Michael. I saw the nanny cam footage from that day. The baby was in that air-conditioned room for hours, and even though he was crying later, probably because he got cold, nothing bad happened…”

Almost collapsed? Crying for hours?

She had practically sprinted out of my apartment that day. And I had rushed my son to the hospital the second she was gone.

“She’s lying, Michael! The security app is on your phone! You can check the footage right now!”

But before I could finish, his face hardened. He lowered the rope ladder, his voice a low growl.

“Go! Strip them both! This woman can’t speak a single word of truth. Today, I’m going to teach her a real lesson!”

The helicopter descended slightly, and Michael immediately pulled Nina into a protective embrace, fussing over her coat. “You lied about our son’s condition too, didn’t you?” he spat at me. “You’d even use your own child just to get attention! You make me sick, Lara. You keep making things worse for yourself. If you don’t start begging for forgiveness, you can stay down there and rot!”

He then turned to Nina, cupping her face with a look of profound tenderness. “Nina, as long as I’m here, I will never let anyone hurt you. Don’t be afraid.”