The Single Mom Took Her Daughter To Work — Didn’t Expect The Mafia Boss’s Proposal
A January night in New York was so cold that breath seemed to freeze the moment it left the lips. Cassidy Moore was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing the restroom on the 12th floor of an office building when the phone in her pocket began to vibrate.
She glanced at the clock, 5 in the morning. No one called at that hour unless something was wrong. Her heart tightened when she saw the daycare number glowing on the screen. The teacher’s voice on the other end was flat and distant, as if she were reading from a prepared notice.
Emma had developed a high fever since midnight. The baby wouldn’t stop coughing. The daycare couldn’t accept a child showing signs of illness. Cassidy needed to come pick her up immediately.
Before Cassidy could say a word, the call ended. She sprang to her feet, her head spinning. Emma, her tiny 8-month-old daughter, the only person she had left in this world.
Cassidy ran out of the building without telling anyone, throwing herself into the freezing darkness. Snow had begun to fall, white flakes whipping against her face like tiny needles. She ran three city blocks because she didn’t have money for a taxi.
By the time she reached the daycare, her lips had turned blue and her legs had gone numb. Emma lay in the teacher’s arms, her face flushed with fever. Her weak cries sounding like those of an abandoned kitten.
Cassidy pulled her daughter close, feeling the heat radiating from the small body through the thin layers of clothing. Her child was burning with fever. She carried Emma back to the dilapidated rented room in a Brooklyn slum.
The room was barely 10 square meters, the walls stained with damp mold, the window taped over because the glass had shattered long ago. The heater had been broken for 2 weeks.
Cassidy laid Emma on the bed, wrapped her in blankets, then opened the medicine cabinet. It was empty. She had used the last of the fever medicine the week before and hadn’t had money to buy more.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she watched her daughter writhe in feverish pain. The phone vibrated again. This time it was the cleaning company. Cassidy answered and her manager’s voice came through sharp and angry. Where was she?
Why had she abandoned her shift? Cassidy tried to explain about Emma, about the fever, about needing a day off. The manager cut her off. There was a special job today, a VIP client, a mansion on the Upper East Side. If she didn’t show up, she was fired. No exceptions.
Cassidy wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the phone against the wall, but she couldn’t because if she lost her job, she wouldn’t have money for rent, no money for milk for Emma, no money for medicine. She and her daughter would be out on the streets in this brutal winter.
And Derek, her violent ex-husband who was hunting her across the city, would find her more easily than ever. Cassidy looked at Emma, drifting in and out of sleep from exhaustion. She had no one to watch her child.
She made the only decision she could. Cassidy dressed Emma in extra layers, wrapped her in three blankets, and placed her in the rickety stroller she had bought from a thrift shop for $5. She stuffed a bottle, diapers, and fever medicine borrowed from a neighbor into her bag.
Then she pushed the stroller out of the dark room and stepped into the white storm.
The address in the message led her to the Upper East Side. Cassidy had never set foot there before. She felt like a stain on a perfect painting. When she stopped in front of the listed address, her heart nearly stopped.
Before her stood a massive mansion, dark as night, with towering iron gates carved with snarling lion heads. Cassidy stood before the iron gate for a long moment, not daring to step inside. Emma fussed in the stroller, her weak cries swallowed by the wind and snow.
Cassidy drew a deep breath and pushed the heavy gate. It opened without a sound, as if perfectly oiled. A path of black stone led her through a barren garden. Stone statues stood scattered on both sides.
Cassidy shivered and pulled the blanket tighter over Emma’s face. The mansion’s front door was made of massive oak. She pushed lightly, and the door opened as though the house had been waiting for her.
Inside, the main hall was as vast as a cathedral. The black marble floor shown like a mirror reflecting her small lost figure. Cassidy felt like an ant that had wandered into the palace of demons. Something about this house terrified her to the bone.
The air was heavy and cold, carrying a scent of loneliness and pain. A thin layer of dust covered everything.
Emma broke into a long coughing fit. Cassidy needed to find warmth immediately. She opened the first door on the ground level—a living room, but the heater was broken.
She rushed into the next room—a dining room. The heater there was broken, too. Panic began to rise in her chest. She gathered Emma into her arms and ran up the staircase. The guest bedroom, the library, the recreation room—all broken.
Emma began to cry louder. Then, at the end of the hallway on the third floor, she found a study with a heater that released warm air.
Cassidy nearly cried with relief. She placed Emma near the heater, removed some layers, and gave her medicine. Emma slowly calmed, her heavy eyelids drifting shut. Cassidy tucked the baby monitor into her pocket and decided to start working while Emma slept.
She didn’t know that as she was scrubbing the staircase on the first floor, a sleek black car had stopped outside and the owner of the mansion was walking into his own home. Cassidy was kneeling on the 12th stair when she heard the crying—Emma’s cry, but it was the cry of fear.
Cassidy dropped the mop and shot up the stairs. The baby monitor in her pocket made no sound; it had broken. She ran through the hallway. Emma’s crying stopped. The sudden silence was terrifying.
She shoved open the study door and froze. A man stood in the center of the room with his back to her, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a long black coat. In his arms was Emma, resting against the chest of a stranger.
Cassidy saw a sleek black gun on the wooden desk. The man was gently swaying, a low shushing sound leaving his mouth. Then the man turned around. His face was sharp as granite, eyes the color of a storm. Yet deep within those eyes, Cassidy saw deep pain.
“Who are you?” His voice was low.
“I’m Cassidy. Cassidy Moore. The cleaning woman. I didn’t know you were coming back today.”
He studied her. “This child, she’s yours.”
Cassidy nodded, her arms reaching out in a silent plea.
“She was crying,” the man said. “I came in, heard her crying, came up here, and found her. She was crying alone.”
“I’m sorry. She’s sick. I don’t have anyone to watch her. I need this job. Please don’t fire me.”
But the man only stood there, looking down at Emma. “How many months?”
“8 months.”
