26. Exposure
EXPOSURE
LUCA
The phone wouldn't stop vibrating.
It rattled across the marble kitchen island. Ava looked up from her dolphin drawing, a blue marker frozen above the page.
Riley looked up from her coffee. "Maddie can come this weekend."
It took me a second to understand why she sounded like she was presenting a request to the board.
"That's good."
"She'd stay two nights. Three at most."
"Still good."
Her fingers shifted around the mug. "I wanted to make sure you were okay with her staying here."
I glanced toward Ava, who was carefully giving her dolphin purple eyelashes.
"She was invited by the smallest person in the house. I don't think either of us has veto power."
Riley smiled, but uncertainty lingered around the edges.
I reached across the island and touched her wrist. "She's your sister. You don't need permission."
"Your contract literally had a guest policy."
"The nanny contract."
Her expression shifted.
I held her gaze. "You're not the nanny anymore."
My phone rattled across the marble kitchen counter before she could answer. Ava looked up from her dolphin drawing, a blue marker frozen above the page.
"Your phone is doing an emergency dance."
Riley reached for it before I could. The color drained from her face.
That was how I knew it was bad.
"Don't," I said. Too late.
She turned the screen toward me.
The headline sat beneath a grainy beach photo of the three of us. Me carrying Ava on my shoulders. Riley laughing beside us in a yellow cover-up, one hand curled around my wrist.
RETIRED BAD BOY'S GOLD-DIGGER NANNY CASHES IN.
For one stupid second, the kitchen dropped out from under me. The refrigerator hum, the gulls outside, Ava tapping her marker against the table—all of it vanished beneath the blood pounding in my ears.
Then my vision narrowed.
I took the phone from Riley and scrolled.
There were twelve photos. Ava building a sandcastle. Riley rubbing sunscreen across my back. My mouth against Riley's temple when I thought no one was watching.
Every private moment had been cropped into proof that Riley was using us.
The comments multiplied beneath the article, each uglier than the last.
She planned this.
Another fame-hungry nanny.
Poor kid.
Riley folded her arms across her stomach. "Well. Apparently I'm very efficient. I seduced you, manipulated your daughter, and stole your fortune all before lunch."
Her voice was dry. Her eyes weren't.
I locked the screen. "I'm calling legal."
"Luca."
"And security. Nobody goes anywhere until they've checked the property and traced where those photos came from."
Ava slid off her stool. "Why can't we leave?"
Riley's expression changed instantly. She crouched beside her, softening her voice. "Your dad is figuring something out."
"What?"
I hated that question. Hated that my past had found the one place I'd sworn it would never touch.
I knelt in front of her. "Someone took pictures of us at the beach without asking."
"That is rude."
"Yeah. It is."
"Are the pictures bad?"
"No." The answer came too fast, too sharp. I forced my hands open on my thighs. "The pictures aren't bad. The people saying unkind things are wrong."
Ava considered that, then picked up her dolphin drawing and held it against Riley's chest.
"This is for you," she said. "Dolphins don't listen to mean internet people."
Riley laughed once, but it cracked in the middle.
I looked at the phone in my hand as another notification lit the screen. Then another. Then twenty more. This wasn't gossip. It was an attack aimed at every weakness I had, and I had brought it straight to my family.
By noon, I'd convinced myself normal was something I could force back into place. Taking Ava to the grocery store was how I learned otherwise.
The grocery store sat ten minutes from the house. Security had cleared the route but advised us to wait another day. I told myself a quick run would help Ava feel like the world hadn't changed overnight.
Riley pushed the cart. Ava walked beside her wearing the pink headphones she usually saved for crowded places, humming under her breath as she counted cereal boxes.
For five minutes, we almost looked ordinary. Then someone shouted my name. A camera flash cracked across the parking lot.
Ava stopped.
A second flash burst from the curb. Three men closed in, shouting questions over one another.
"Luca, is the nanny after your money?"
"Riley, how long have you been sleeping with your boss?"
"Is Ava safe around her?"
The cart slammed into my hip when Riley jerked it sideways, trying to block Ava from view. A bag of oranges spilled across the pavement, rolling beneath parked cars.
"Back up," I snapped.
They didn't.
Ava's headphones slipped crooked as she covered her ears. Sunlight ricocheted off windshields while the flashes burst from every direction.
"No, no, no." Her voice climbed. "Too loud."
I moved toward her, but a photographer stepped directly into my path.
"Get out of the way."
He lifted his camera again. The flash hit. Ava folded onto the asphalt.
The sound she made tore through me—a high, panicked cry that came when words disappeared. She curled around herself, palms pressed over her ears, knees pulled tight against her chest.
Riley dropped beside her without hesitation, using her own body as a shield.
"Ava, I'm here." Her voice stayed low despite the chaos. "You don't have to talk. Just listen to me breathe."
I turned on the men.
Every instinct I'd spent years learning to control came roaring back.
"You take one more picture of my daughter, and I swear?—"
"Luca." Riley's voice cut through the red haze.
I looked down.
She wasn't asking me to handle the photographers. She was asking me to stop fighting long enough to be Ava's father.
I crouched behind Riley and pulled off my jacket, holding it wide to block the cameras. Ava's cries hitched beneath it.
"Baby, it's Dad."
Her hand shot out blindly.
I caught it.
Security finally shoved through the crowd, forcing a path to the SUV. Riley and I lifted Ava together, still curled tight between us. Her face pressed into my neck, hot and wet with tears. I could feel every broken breath against my skin.
As I carried her away, the cameras kept clicking. And every flash felt like proof that I had failed her.
Ava finally fell asleep with one fist wrapped in Riley's shirt.
I stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching Riley sit against the headboard with Ava curled across her lap. The curtains were drawn. The room smelled faintly of lavender spray and the sweat-damp hair stuck to Ava's temple.
Riley looked up at me. "She's out."
I nodded, though relief never came.
Downstairs, my phone had been ringing for twenty minutes: Legal. Security. The resort's PR director. Donny. Everyone wanting decisions while the only one that mattered slept upstairs because strangers had hunted her through a parking lot.
I stepped into the hall. Riley eased Ava onto the pillow and followed, pulling the door nearly closed behind her.
"You need to pack," I said.
Her face went still. "Excuse me?"
"I'll have security take you somewhere private tonight. One of the resort villas, maybe the Keys. Somewhere nobody knows."
"You're sending me away."
"I'm getting you out of the line of fire."
"No, Luca. You're panicking."
I felt the truth of it before I could answer.
I dragged a hand over my mouth. "You saw what happened."
"I was there."
"They surrounded you. They pushed Ava into a meltdown just to get a reaction from me. I won't give them another chance."
"So your answer is to make me disappear?"
"My answer is to put you somewhere they can't reach."
"And Ava's going to hear that as one more person leaving when life gets hard."
I looked toward her bedroom door. "Don't make this about abandonment."
"It is about abandonment." Riley lowered her voice, but the anger in it sharpened. "She woke up in the car asking whether I was still coming home with you. She needs the same faces, the same routines, the same people who make her feel secure."
"And if staying puts you both in danger?"
"Then we face the danger together. We change how we move. We add security. We make a plan. We do not hand control to people who profit from frightening us."
Us.
I stared at her, furious at the logic I couldn't break and more furious that fear had already made me reach for the oldest solution I knew: cut away what mattered before it could be taken.
Riley stepped closer. "You don't get to push me out of this family because you're scared."
"That's not what this is."
"Then stop treating me like something you can move out of danger and pick up again later."
I wanted to argue. Instead, I looked through the narrow gap in Ava's door at the small shape beneath the blanket. Riley's fingers closed around mine.
"We stay," she said. "And we make staying safer."
Keeping them safe no longer meant keeping them at a distance.
The dining table disappeared beneath markers, printed maps, sticky notes, and three pairs of noise-canceling headphones. Ava sat between Riley and me in her pajamas, serious enough to make it feel like a board meeting instead of damage control.
"This one is too itchy," she announced, pushing the black pair away.
Riley slid the purple pair toward her. "Try these."
Ava fitted them over her ears, blinked twice, then gave us a thumbs-up.
"Purple wins," I said.
Donny leaned over the floor plan security had printed for the house, grocery store, and resort. "We need primary exits, backup exits, and one adult assigned to Ava at all times."
Riley uncapped a green marker. "Green for safe exits."
"Red for cameras," Ava said.
I looked at her. "Why red?"
"Because red means stop."
My chest tightened, but I nodded. "Red it is."
We worked through every place Ava went—home, camp, the resort, and the grocery store I never wanted to see again. Security could change the cars, routes, and entrances. None of it mattered unless Ava understood what to do.
Riley marked quiet rooms. Donny added security checkpoints. I wrote emergency numbers on laminated cards and tucked one into every bag Ava used.