Ten years

Ten years is the explicit measure given for Jessica Cooper’s service as Kayla Renae Morrison’s assistant. The duration establishes Jessica as a long-standing presence in Kayla’s household and personal affairs, while the later revelation of what she concealed makes that continuity more than a simple record of employment.

The Stated Duration

Kayla identifies Jessica as the only member of her domestic staff who lives on the property and says she has been her assistant for a decade. The account gives no calendar dates for the beginning or end of that period, so ten years functions as a defined duration rather than a dated chronology. It places Jessica’s employment at the center of Kayla’s established household, where she has unusual proximity compared with the other staff.

That length of service is consistent with the range of responsibilities Kayla assigns her. Jessica is the person Kayla trusts to manage the home and her personal life, handle business crises, deal with Adi Morrison when she acts out, and protect Kayla’s public image. Kayla’s confidence in her is therefore both practical and personal: a decade of work has made Jessica the intermediary through whom much of the household’s ordinary business passes.

Trust and Its Limits

The employment is not free of strain. Kayla’s household operates under strict rules for staff: the draperies must remain down, workers cannot leave during their shifts, they must not speak to Kayla unless she addresses them first, and they are forbidden to befriend Adi. Staff must also keep anything they see or hear within the mansion confidential. Jessica’s position gives her responsibility inside this closed environment, but it also makes her part of the system of secrecy surrounding it.

The contrast becomes explicit when Adi confronts Jessica after being bailed out of the police station. Adi rejects Jessica’s attempt to lecture her or act as her mother, then asks whether Jessica will tell Kayla about the arrest. Jessica instead warns her about the danger of attracting press attention and tells her not to let Kayla know she was at the station. Adi recognizes the pattern of concealment and warns that the secrets inside the house could eventually bring it down. The decade of service thus signifies sustained closeness, but not uncomplicated openness.

The Family Timeline

Jessica’s later account places the decade of employment beside a much longer-running family secret. She says she discovered that Jamie Cooper had an alter ego, Kayla Renae Morrison, and began watching and following Jamie when he left home. She learned that Kayla was wealthy, owned hotel chains and a mansion, and became pregnant with Adi around this period. Jessica also recounts that Jamie rarely came around until Adi was twelve, and that when he did, his mind had blocked out their daughter; Kayla accepted Adi as her own without remembering that Jessica had brought her into the home.

These disclosures do not establish that every event in Jessica’s account began or ended within the precise ten-year employment period. They do, however, make the stated duration resonate against years of concealed parentage, interrupted recognition, and carefully maintained household boundaries. What Kayla presents as the record of a trusted assistant’s long service is also the span in which Jessica’s access to the family coexists with secrets that shape Adi’s place in it.