After Luc woke up, the silence changed.
It wasn’t quieter. Just heavier.
Like the house had inhaled something it wasn’t sure it wanted to keep.
Mara noticed it first in the way the staff moved—stiffer, more alert. They no longer nodded when she passed. No more polite glances or faint greetings. Now, their eyes flicked toward her, then away. Conversations paused when she entered a room. Doors shut a little faster.
By the third day, she stopped trying to greet anyone.
She wasn’t one of them anymore.
The halls felt colder too.
Not physically—something deeper. A stillness that sank into the walls.
She walked slower now. Checked over her shoulder more than once. Told herself she was being paranoid.
Luc hadn’t spoken since the day he touched her wrist. But he watched her every time she stepped inside his room. Like he’d been waiting. Like he always would be.
“You hear it now, don’t you?” he’d said quietly once, when the wind howled against the window.
“The house? It doesn’t like forgetting.”
She hadn’t asked what he meant.
She didn’t want to know.
That afternoon, she was on her way to the linen closet when she noticed something unusual.
A hallway she passed every day—the narrow one with the locked oak door at the end—was ajar.
Not wide. Just slightly open.
Mara paused.
She glanced behind her. No footsteps. No voices.
She stepped closer. The door groaned faintly as it drifted open with her approach.
Inside: dust, silence, shadows.
And a single framed photograph resting on a small table beneath a sheet of cracked glass.
She stepped into the room.
The photo was black and white—aged but crisp.
It showed a boy. Dark hair. Light eyes. Unsmiling. Standing in front of a wrought iron gate.
He couldn’t have been more than ten.
He looked exactly like Luc.
Before she could reach for the frame, she heard it:
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The woman in gray stood in the doorway, hands folded calmly, expression cold.
Mara turned, startled. “I—I didn’t mean to—”
“Some doors are locked for a reason.”
The door creaked closed behind her with a sound like warning.
Later that night, as Mara lay awake in her small bed, she thought about the boy in the photo.
The expression in his eyes.
He hadn’t looked scared.
He’d looked empty.
-
She was summoned without explanation.
A knock on her door at 6:00 a.m. sharp. No time for coffee. No time for a coat.
The woman in gray waited in the hall, expression unreadable. “They’re requesting your presence in the study.”
No further detail. Just a gesture to follow.
The study was nothing like Luc’s room—warm in color but not in feeling. Golds and rusts in place of gray. Tall windows veiled in thick curtains. A fire that burned but gave no comfort.
Two chairs were already occupied when she arrived.
The physician—Dr. Larke—sat nearest the hearth, hands folded neatly over one knee.
And beside him, someone new.
A man in a sharp gray suit. Younger. Cleaner. With the kind of perfectly average face Mara would forget the moment she turned away.
“Miss Estrella,” the man said, rising with practiced professionalism. “I’m here on behalf of the Vescari estate.”
“I didn’t realize the estate had legal counsel on-site,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even.
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We’re always here. Just out of sight.”
She sat.
And the room shifted.
Dr. Larke adjusted his tie. “We wanted to remind you of the nature of your employment.”
“I’m aware.”
“And of your contract’s confidentiality clauses.”
Mara’s spine straightened. “I haven’t violated anything.”
“We’re not accusing you,” the suited man said smoothly. “We’re… clarifying boundaries.”
There was a beat of silence. Then—
“You’ve developed a rapport with Mr. Vescari.”
Mara blinked. “He barely speaks.”
“But he speaks to you.”
Her throat tightened.
The man continued, tone casual. “You may find him charming. Even sincere. But Luciano Vescari is not a man to form attachments lightly. Or safely.”
Dr. Larke leaned forward slightly. “This house has seen five caretakers before you. None lasted six months.”
Mara’s hands curled in her lap. “And what happened to them?”
Another silence. Longer this time.
Then the man smiled again—cool, elegant, empty. “They made poor choices.”
By the time she left the study, the hallway felt colder. The doors seemed heavier. The house more silent.
But when she entered Luc’s room that afternoon, he was already awake.
Waiting.
As if he knew.
“You’re early,” he said softly.
She didn’t answer. She busied herself with the bedside tray, avoiding his gaze.
“They warned you, didn’t they?” he murmured.
She froze.
“I can see it in your shoulders.”
Still, she said nothing.
Luc tilted his head. “What lie did they give you? That I’m dangerous? Manipulative? Possessive?”
He reached for the edge of the blanket, drew it back slowly to reveal the long, pale scars across his ribs.
“They never asked why I fought,” he said. “Only how to keep me quiet.”
Mara looked up at him. Her voice came out quiet, shaking. “Why are you telling me this?”
Luc’s eyes never left hers.
“Because they don’t care what you think.”
“But I do.”
-
It was late. The kind of late where the air felt thinner, like the house had finally stopped pretending to sleep.
Mara stood in the open doorway of Luc’s room, uncertain.
She hadn’t meant to come back.
She’d told herself to keep distance after the meeting. To stop letting him get under her skin. But something had pulled her here anyway.
Or maybe someone.
“Are you just going to hover?” Luc’s voice drifted across the dark.
She stepped inside.
The lamps were off. Only the fireplace cast light, flickering across his face in gold and shadow. He sat with one arm resting over his bent knee, shirt half-unbuttoned, watching her like he already knew she would come.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“I don’t sleep much anymore.”
“Why not?”
Luc gave a half-smile. “Too many memories. Not enough forgetting.”
She moved toward the chair by the fire—her usual spot—but didn’t sit.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she murmured.
He tilted his head. “Yet here you are.”
Silence bloomed between them. Not empty. Full of unsaid things.
“I’m not…” She hesitated. “I’m not good at trusting people.”
“I know.”
Her chest tightened.
Luc's voice softened. “You told me that. On the third week. Right after you cleaned the scar on my jaw.”
Mara sank into the chair.
She didn’t ask how he remembered. She no longer questioned what he’d heard.
He didn’t look away from her.
“What did you dream about before this?” he asked.
“This?”
“This place. This job. Me.”
She considered lying.
But something about the question… the way he asked it so quietly, like he was offering her a safe place to set something heavy down.
“I used to dream about living near the ocean,” she said at last. “Somewhere small. Quiet. I wanted to open a bookstore. Or a coffee shop. Or both.”
He smiled, barely.
“You still want that?”
“No. I think I lost that part of myself.”
“Do you want it back?”
She looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know what I want anymore.”
Luc stood, slowly, and crossed to her.
He moved like he was used to being watched.
When he crouched beside her chair, she stiffened.
His hand didn’t touch her. Just rested near her knee, close enough to feel his warmth.
“You speak like someone no one ever chose,” he murmured.
Her throat burned. “Maybe no one did.”
“I would have.”
Her heart cracked open, just a little.
“I’m not special,” she whispered.
Luc leaned in.
“You are to me.”
Mara stood abruptly, her pulse racing.
“I should go.”
Luc didn’t stop her.
But as she walked away, his voice followed her like a thread tying itself through her spine.
“You can lie to them, Mara.”
“But don’t lie to me.”
-
The nightmares had started again.
She didn’t remember them clearly—just flashes. White walls. Whispers behind doors. The sound of something scratching at wood, muffled by silk.
When Mara sat up in bed, her throat was dry, and her sheets were damp with sweat.
She didn’t remember falling asleep.
The hallway outside her door was pitch black. The sconces that usually glowed low through the night were off. She thought the power had gone out—until she saw a light.
Not ahead.
Behind.
A faint sliver of warm yellow spilling from a half-open door she had never seen unlatched.
Mara stepped into the corridor barefoot, each step a soft echo against the tile. She passed Luc’s room. The door was shut. No sound inside.
She told herself not to stop.
But she did.
She listened for breathing.
Nothing.
Just the stillness again.
The kind that felt aware.
The light came from a sitting room tucked between two unused parlors. She knew the space well—had passed it dozens of times. The door had always been locked. Unmarked. Unremarkable.
But tonight it waited for her, like it had opened just wide enough to let her in.
Mara stepped inside.
The air smelled like cedar and old paper.
The fireplace was cold. The furniture, dust-covered. The windows covered with linen sheets nailed into the frame.
She might have left.
But something caught her eye.
A painting.
Torn nearly in half, the canvas hung at an angle on the far wall. The frame was ornate, dark wood laced in symbols she didn’t recognize. The face on the portrait was missing—ripped straight through the middle.
But it was the writing behind the canvas that stopped her breath.
Someone had scrawled across the wall in faded black ink:
“The devil has eyes. And he chooses who sees him.”
Mara backed away.
Her foot hit something soft.
A glove.
Black leather.
Perfectly placed.
Not dropped.
Left.
When she returned to her room, the hallway lights were back on.
Everything as it had been.
Except for the feeling that followed her to bed—that someone had waited until she was ready to see,
and then opened the door.
--
Kamyawski