The millionaire fired 37 nannies… until one housemaid did the impossible.
My name is Ricardo Mendonza Albuquerque, I am 36 years old, and a little over a year ago I lost my wife, Claris — victim of an aggressive cancer that consumed her in barely six months. Since then, my life and that of my six daughters has become chaos that not even all the money in the world could put in order.
I am the founder of Mantec, a tech company valued at more than one billion reais. I have everything—on the surface. A mansion in Morumbi, luxury cars, a bank account that could sustain entire generations. But when the heart is empty, square meters and zeros on a screen only echo. During the last two weeks, 37 nannies have walked through the doors of my house.
Some ran away crying, others swore they would never return, not even for all the gold in São Paulo. Agency staff already have me on a blacklist. They call me the impossible case. It’s not my fault, not even my daughters’. It’s the wound Claris left behind—open, festering, like a silence that screams inside every room.
The house that once vibrated with laughter, music, and the smell of homemade bread, now smells of paint on the walls, broken toys, and swallowed tears. My daughters… God, my daughters.
Mariana, the eldest, is 12 and has the sharpest mind I’ve ever seen in a child. She leads her sisters like a small army at war with the world. She was the one who told me on the day of her mother’s funeral: No woman will take her place, Dad. No one. Since then, every nanny who enters becomes an enemy to be defeated.
Then there are the twins, Beatriz and Bianca, six years old. Two little girls who smile while conspiring. They put fake insects in shoes, block doors with glue, hide food in drawers. Their laughter when planning mischief sounds almost like a shield against pain.
Laura, ten, fights a different battle. Since Claris died, she pulls out clumps of her own hair. There are bald patches on her head—marks of anxiety that even the most expensive psychologists haven’t been able to stop.
Julia, at nine, suffers panic attacks, especially at night. Sometimes I hear her scream her mother’s name from across the hallway and I stand frozen outside her door, not knowing how to help.
