A Dying Billionaire Begged His Maid to Spend One Night With Him—But His Reason Changed Everything3 m1
PART 2:
The woman’s name was Cassandra Bell.
Iris learned it at 4:37, when Mrs. Whitmore called from Nicholas’s office line and asked, with barely concealed irritation, whether “Miss Bell” had arrived.
“Yes,” Iris said, staring at the kettle that had not boiled because she had forgotten to turn it on. “She’s upstairs.”
A pause.
“Is Mr. Valmont well enough to receive her?”
The question was so strange that Iris’s hand stilled on the phone.
“Well enough?”
Mrs. Whitmore exhaled sharply, as if she had said more than she meant to. “Never mind. Please have him call me when she leaves.”
The line went dead.
Iris stood in the kitchen with the receiver still pressed to her ear. Well enough. Not available. Not busy. Not home.
Well enough.
Above her, something shattered.
The sound cracked through the mansion like a gunshot.
Iris dropped the phone and ran.
By the time she reached the second floor, Cassandra Bell was standing in the hallway outside Nicholas’s bedroom, one hand over her mouth and the other clutching her purse so tightly her knuckles looked bloodless.
“I didn’t do anything,” Cassandra said immediately.
The words made Iris’s stomach turn.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He—he told me to leave. I said I only came because he called me, and then he just…” Cassandra gestured toward the open door with a trembling hand. “He collapsed.”
Iris pushed past her.
Nicholas was on the floor beside the bed, one hand pressed hard against his chest, the other gripping the leg of the nightstand. A broken glass lay near him, water bleeding into the expensive rug.
His face had gone a terrible gray.
“Nicholas,” Iris said.
Not Mr. Valmont.
Not sir.
Nicholas.
His eyes opened at the sound of her voice. For one bare second, the pain on his face shifted into something almost like relief.
“Get out,” he rasped.
Iris froze.
Cassandra stepped backward in the hallway.
“Not you,” Nicholas said, dragging breath through clenched teeth. “Her.”
Iris turned her head.
Cassandra did not wait to be asked twice. Her heels struck the floor in frantic little blows, and within moments, the staircase swallowed her.
Iris knelt beside him. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to say no.”
His fingers shot out and closed around her wrist with surprising strength. “No hospital.”
“Nicholas, you’re on the floor.”
“Iris.”
It was the way he said her name that stopped her. Not commanding. Not cold. Barely even a whisper.
Afraid.
She had worked for him for 5 years and had seen him angry, amused, distant, cruelly polite, exhausted. She had never seen him afraid.
His grip loosened. His hand slid from her wrist to her palm, as if he had not meant to hold her there and could not make himself let go.
“There are pills,” he said. “Top drawer.”
Iris moved quickly. Inside the drawer, beneath an expensive watch and a stack of cuff links, was an orange prescription bottle. The label had been partly scratched off, but one word remained clear.
Pain.
She gave him the pill with water from the bathroom sink and sat on the floor beside him until his breathing slowed. Minutes passed. Maybe ten. Maybe thirty. In that room, time seemed to lose its edges.
At last, Nicholas rested his head back against the side of the bed.
“You called her,” Iris said quietly.
His laugh was bitter and thin. “That’s what you want to ask?”
“No. What I want to ask is why a man who can buy three hospitals refuses to go to one.”
He closed his eyes.
Iris waited.
The mansion was silent beneath them. Somewhere outside, thunder rolled over Chicago, low and distant, dragging clouds behind it. The room smelled of glass, rain, expensive cologne, and something medicinal Iris had noticed lately but never wanted to understand.
Nicholas opened his eyes again, but he did not look at her.
“I was diagnosed 7 months ago.”
The words entered the room calmly. Too calmly.
Iris felt them strike somewhere behind her ribs.
“With what?”
He turned his head toward her. His expression told her before he did.
“Glioblastoma,” he said. “Aggressive. Inoperable. Very ambitious little monster. I suppose we have that in common.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
Iris stared at him.
“No.”
“That was my first response too.”
“You’re 29.”
“Cancer has never been known for respecting birthdays.”
Her throat tightened so quickly that speaking hurt. “There must be treatment. There must be—”
“There was. There is. There were doctors, specialists, clinical trials, German machines, Swiss injections, men in white coats saying words like ‘promising’ when they meant ‘unlikely.’”
He looked away.
“Iris, I’m dying.”
There it was.
Not hidden behind canceled meetings. Not buried inside hospital envelopes. Not disguised by tremors or headaches or the deadened look in his eyes.
The truth sat between them, ugly and still.
Iris got to her feet.
Nicholas watched her with something like resignation, as if this was the moment he had expected from everyone. Shock. Pity. Escape.
Instead, she crossed the room, picked up the broken glass piece by piece, and dropped it into the trash bin.
Then she took a towel from the bathroom and pressed it into the wet rug.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“My job.”
“Iris.”
She kept scrubbing. “Do you need help getting into bed?”
He stared at her. “You heard me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re cleaning?”
“If I stop moving, I may do something unprofessional.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “Like what?”
“Cry in front of my employer.”
The faintness vanished from his face.
She should not have said it. She knew it the second the words left her mouth. But grief had come too fast, too violently, and it had dragged honesty with it.
Nicholas looked down at his hands. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Because I might cry?”
“Because you might care.”
The towel slipped from Iris’s fingers.
Nicholas pushed himself up, slowly, painfully, until he was sitting straighter against the bed.
“Cassandra doesn’t care,” he said. “Neither did the ones before her. That was the point.”
Iris said nothing.
“I thought it would be easier. To fill the room with people who wanted something simple. Money. Access. A story. A night they could turn into a rumor.” He swallowed. “No one looked at me long enough to notice what was happening. No one asked why my hands shook or why I forgot words or why I couldn’t stand the smell of wine anymore.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“You noticed everything.”
Iris wrapped her arms around herself. “That is not a crime.”
“No. It’s worse.”
She almost laughed, but it broke inside her before it became a sound.
Nicholas looked toward the windows. Rain had begun to strike the glass, each drop catching the city lights and tearing them downward.
“I called Cassandra tonight because I thought I could prove something to myself,” he said. “That I could still be the man people recognize. Nicholas Valmont. Untouchable. Desired. In control.”
“And?”
“And when she touched me, I felt nothing except tired.” His voice roughened. “Then she asked whether the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?”
“That I was selling pieces of the company. That I was unstable. That I had no heirs. That my uncle was preparing to challenge my control of the board.”
Iris remembered the hospital envelopes. The canceled meetings. Mrs. Whitmore’s strange question.
“Is he?”
Nicholas’s silence answered.
Iris sat carefully on the edge of the bed, leaving space between them. “Why does that matter tonight?”
For the first time, fear flickered openly across his face.
“Because tomorrow morning, my uncle is bringing doctors and lawyers into this house to have me declared medically incompetent.”
The rain grew harder.
Iris stared at him. “Can he do that?”
“He can try. If the board believes I’m no longer fit to make decisions, if he can prove I’m declining quickly enough, he can take temporary control. After that, he can do whatever he wants with the company.”
“But it’s yours.”
Nicholas smiled without humor. “Nothing is yours when enough powerful men agree it shouldn’t be.”
“What do you need?”
The question surprised him.
He looked at her slowly, carefully, as if he were afraid to misunderstand.
“I need tonight,” he said.
Iris felt the room contract.
Nicholas must have seen something change in her face because he closed his eyes and cursed under his breath.
“Not like that,” he said. “God, Iris, not like that.”
Her cheeks burned anyway.
“I need a witness,” he continued. “Someone who can say I was lucid. Coherent. Aware of my choices. My lawyers are coming at midnight. Mrs. Whitmore is bringing them through the east entrance, away from the security cameras my uncle’s people can access.”
Iris frowned. “Then why ask me to stay with you?”
“Because lawyers can certify documents. Doctors can certify mental state. But they can all be bought, pressured, threatened.” His gaze locked on hers. “You can’t.”
She looked away.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you’ve worked in this house for 5 years and never taken a single thing that wasn’t yours. I know my mother’s diamond bracelet sat for 2 days under the guest-room dresser and you returned it without mentioning it to anyone. I know my father once left $40,000 in cash in a coat pocket and you logged it with security before anyone even knew it was missing.”
Iris went still.
“You knew about that?”
“I know everything that matters.”
“No,” she whispered. “You don’t.”
Something passed between them then, old and unspoken.
Nicholas’s voice dropped. “Then tell me.”
She should have stood up. She should have walked out, called Mrs. Whitmore, called the hospital, called anyone who knew what to do with a dying billionaire and a maid whose heart had become a dangerous thing.
Instead, Iris sat beside him in the darkening room and said, “My mother cleaned houses too.”
Nicholas did not interrupt.
“She worked for people who looked through her. People who trusted her with their children, their medicine, their jewelry, their secrets, but never with a chair at the table.” Iris’s fingers twisted in her lap. “When she got sick, none of them remembered her name.”
Nicholas’s face tightened.
“She died when I was 17. After that, I learned what rich people are willing to give and what they are not. Old clothes, expired food, recommendations, charity when someone is watching.” She swallowed. “Not dignity.”
“Iris—”
“So when I came here, I promised myself I would never mistake proximity for belonging. I would never look at chandeliers and think they were stars. I would never love a house that would replace me by Monday.”
Nicholas’s breath caught.
She looked at him then.
“And I promised myself I would never love a man who could buy anything except the courage to be honest.”
The words remained between them, irreversible.
Nicholas looked as if she had struck him.
Maybe she had.
Then he reached for her hand, slowly enough that she could move away.
She did not.
His fingers were cold.
“Iris,” he said, “I have been dishonest about almost everything. My health. My fear. My reasons for keeping people away.” His thumb moved once over her knuckles, barely there. “But not about you.”
She could not breathe.
“You were the only real thing in this house,” he said. “And I was too selfish to let you leave and too cowardly to ask you to stay for the right reason.”
Thunder cracked above them.
At 11:48 that night, the Valmont mansion went dark.
Not fully. The emergency lights remained, casting the hallways in a dim amber glow. But every screen went black. The security panel near the kitchen blinked once, then died.
Iris was in the library, gathering old files Nicholas had asked for, when the lights failed.
For a moment, she stood perfectly still.
Then she heard a sound from downstairs.
Not thunder.
The front door.
Iris turned off the flashlight on her phone and moved toward the hallway.
From the second-floor landing, she saw three men enter the foyer in dark coats. Behind them came an older man with silver hair, polished shoes, and a cane he did not need.
Edmund Valmont.
Nicholas’s uncle.
Iris had seen him only twice before. Once at a holiday dinner he left early, and once on the cover of a business magazine with the headline: The Valmont Behind the Valmont.
He stood in the dim foyer as if the house had always belonged to him and was only now remembering.
“Find him,” Edmund said.
One of the men looked up.
Iris stepped back into shadow just in time.
Her heart kicked against her ribs.
Nicholas was in his bedroom, weak, waiting for Mrs. Whitmore and the lawyers who were supposed to arrive through the east entrance in less than ten minutes.
But the power was out.
The security was dead.
And Edmund had come early.
Iris moved.
She knew the house in ways no Valmont ever would. She knew which stairs creaked, which doors swollen by humidity stuck in their frames, which service corridors cut behind the formal rooms. She slipped through the narrow passage beside the linen closet and reached Nicholas’s room without crossing the main hallway.
He was standing when she entered, one hand braced against the bedpost.
“You shouldn’t be up,” she whispered.
“Power’s out.”
“Your uncle is here.”
Nicholas’s face changed, not with surprise but confirmation.
“How many?”
“Three men with him. Maybe more outside.”
He looked toward the clock. “Whitmore won’t get through.”
“What do we do?”
Nicholas opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a small black drive.
Iris stared at it. “What is that?”
“The reason he wants me declared incompetent tonight.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Nicholas grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the wall beside the fireplace. He pressed a hidden latch beneath the mantel. A narrow panel opened, revealing a passage Iris had never seen.
Of course, she thought wildly. The house still had secrets.
They slipped inside just as Nicholas’s bedroom door opened.
Through a thin crack in the panel, Iris saw Edmund enter.
He looked around the room with mild disappointment.
“Nicholas,” he called softly. “Don’t make this theatrical.”
Nicholas stood inches behind Iris in the dark passage, his breath uneven against her hair.
Edmund walked to the bed. His cane tapped once against the floor.
“I know you’re frightened,” he said. “That’s understandable. Your father was frightened at the end too.”
Nicholas went rigid.
Edmund smiled at the empty room.
“You always were too sentimental for his memory.”
Iris felt Nicholas’s hand tighten around the drive.
One of Edmund’s men entered. “He’s not here.”
“He’s here,” Edmund said. “He has nowhere else to go.”
The man lowered his voice. “The lawyers?”
“Delayed. Mrs. Whitmore’s car had an unfortunate issue at the gate.”
A coldness crawled up Iris’s spine.
Edmund turned toward the fireplace.
For one horrible second, Iris thought he saw them.
Then a phone rang downstairs.
Edmund’s expression sharpened. He stepped out of the room, his men following.
Iris waited until their footsteps receded.
Nicholas opened the panel and pulled her into the room. His face was pale with pain.
“We have to get to the east entrance,” he said.
“They blocked it.”
“Then the garage.”
“You can barely walk.”
“I don’t need to walk far.”
He said it like a man making a calculation, not a promise.
Iris hated him for it.
She took his arm and dragged it over her shoulders. “You are not dying in a hallway because your uncle has dramatic timing.”
Despite everything, a breath of laughter escaped him.
They made it to the service stairs. Halfway down, Nicholas faltered. His weight dropped suddenly, and Iris nearly went with him.
“Nicholas.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
“Board voted me ruthless, not convincing.”
His face twisted with pain, but he forced himself upright.
They reached the lower corridor near the kitchen. The garage door was twenty feet away.
Then the lights came back on.
White brilliance flooded the hall.
And Edmund Valmont stepped from the dining room with a gun in his hand.
Iris stopped.
Nicholas’s arm tightened around her shoulders.
Edmund sighed as if inconvenienced. “There you are.”
Nicholas straightened, pulling away from Iris, trying to stand on his own.
“You cut the power,” he said.
“I restored it too. Let no one say I don’t finish what I start.”
Iris looked at the gun.
Edmund noticed and smiled. “Relax, Miss Vale. I have no interest in shooting household staff.”
She froze.
Nicholas’s voice went dangerously quiet. “How do you know her last name?”
“I know everything that enters this house.”
“No,” Iris said before she could stop herself. “You don’t.”
Edmund’s gaze shifted to her, amused. “Loyal little thing, aren’t you?”
Nicholas stepped in front of her.
Even dying, even shaking, he made himself a wall.
“I sent copies,” Nicholas said. “The drive isn’t your only problem.”
Edmund’s amusement faded.
“To whom?”
Nicholas smiled faintly. “Everyone who matters.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Possibly.”
Edmund lifted the gun a little. “You always did inherit your mother’s talent for melodrama.”
Nicholas’s face emptied.
Iris felt the change in him. It was not rage. It was something colder.
“You don’t get to speak about her.”
“I protected this family after your father ruined it.”
“You poisoned him.”
The words hit the hallway like a physical blow.
For the first time, Edmund’s composure cracked.
Iris stopped breathing.
Nicholas reached into his pocket and pulled out the black drive. “My father recorded everything. Payments to doctors. Altered reports. The dosage changes. He knew before he died, but he was too weak to fight you.”
Edmund’s face had gone white.
“You found nothing.”
“I found the nurse you paid to disappear. I found the offshore account. I found the letter my mother wrote before her car went off Lake Shore Drive.”
Iris’s stomach turned.
Nicholas’s voice roughened. “And I found out why you’re so desperate now. Because my diagnosis wasn’t bad luck, was it?”
Silence.
Edmund’s hand tightened around the gun.
“Careful,” he said.
Nicholas laughed once, low and hollow. “There it is.”
Iris looked at Nicholas, then at Edmund.
“What does he mean?”
Nicholas did not look back at her.
“The first doctor was Edmund’s. The first scans were his. The treatment he pushed made me worse, not better.”
“No,” Iris whispered.
Edmund smiled thinly. “You were dying anyway.”
Nicholas swayed.
Iris grabbed his arm.
In that second, Edmund moved.
But Iris moved faster.
She threw the heavy brass tray from the sideboard with both hands. It struck Edmund’s wrist. The gun fired into the ceiling, deafening in the narrow hall. Plaster rained down. Nicholas lunged forward, slamming into Edmund with the last of his strength.
Both men hit the floor.
The gun skidded across the marble.
Iris dove for it.
One of Edmund’s men appeared at the far end of the hall. “Sir?”
Iris raised the gun with shaking hands.
“Don’t,” she said.
Her voice did not sound like hers.
The man stopped.
Behind him, the front door burst open.
Mrs. Whitmore entered with two lawyers, Marcus the driver, and four uniformed police officers.
For one stunned heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then Edmund Valmont began to laugh.
It was soft at first. Then louder.
Nicholas lay on the floor, gasping, one hand pressed to his temple. Iris dropped the gun and crawled to him.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Nicholas, look at me.”
His eyes found hers.
“Still here?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Stubborn.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Whitmore knelt beside them, her face pale but composed. “The documents are ready.”
Iris stared at her. “Now?”
Nicholas’s hand closed around Iris’s.
“Now,” he said.
The lawyers spread papers across the hallway floor because there was no time for tables, dignity, or ceremony. Edmund sat against the wall between two officers, silent now, his face carved from hatred.
Nicholas signed with a trembling hand.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Each signature looked weaker than the last.
Iris watched without understanding until one of the lawyers turned the final page toward her.
Her name was on it.
Iris Vale.
“What is this?” she asked.
Nicholas looked up at her from the floor.
“The house,” he said. “The voting shares. The foundation. Everything that matters.”
Her hand went cold. “No.”
“Iris—”
“No. You don’t get to do this because you’re dying.”
“I’m doing it because I’m not dead yet.”
The lawyer held out a pen.
Iris stared at Nicholas. “Why?”
His eyes softened in a way that broke her.
“Because you were wrong,” he whispered. “This house won’t replace you by Monday.”
Iris could not speak.
Nicholas’s fingers slipped from hers.
“Nicholas?”
His eyes rolled back.
The pen fell from Iris’s hand.
Someone shouted for paramedics. Mrs. Whitmore grabbed her shoulders. Marcus ran toward the door. The hallway blurred into motion, voices, footsteps, hands.
But Iris saw only Nicholas.
His face turned still beneath the chandelier light.
And then Edmund, still seated against the wall, leaned close enough for only Iris to hear.
“You poor girl,” he whispered. “He never told you the real reason he chose you.”
Iris turned slowly.
Edmund smiled with blood on his teeth.
“Ask Mrs. Whitmore who your father was.”
The world narrowed to that sentence.
Across the hall, Mrs. Whitmore went perfectly still.
May you like
And in Iris’s hand, forgotten until that moment, the black drive blinked once with a tiny red light.
Recording.
