Chapter 2 - Shadows in the North WingBy midnight, the mansion had settled into an oppressive, tomb-like quiet. Cicero felt a million miles away, and the memory of my brother Tyler’s pale face in the hospital bed was the only thing keeping me awake as I scrubbed the baseboards of the second-floor gallery.
Mrs. Hargrove had given me a tiny, windowless room near the servants' quarters, but sleep was impossible. My ribs throbbed with every movement, serving as a constant reminder of the bronze horse. More importantly, Noah’s parting words—the lights lie—kept echoing in my head.
I crept out into the hallway, my soft-soled cleaning shoes making no sound against the Persian runner. The mansion was a maze of wealth and paranoia, equipped with state-of-the-art motion sensors and closed-circuit cameras. Yet, as I neared the boundary of the forbidden north wing, I noticed something strange: the security monitors mounted near the corridor ceiling were completely dark.
A heavy oak door marked the entrance to the north wing—the wing Mrs. Hargrove had explicitly warned me never to enter.
A sliver of pale yellow light bled out from beneath the door.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I knew the risks. If Dominic Vale caught me snooping, he wouldn't just fire me; people who crossed the Vale family tended to vanish into Lake Michigan. But Tyler’s surgery was scheduled for next month, and the private files I needed to access to understand Noah’s condition—and perhaps leverage a higher wage from Dominic—were rumored to be kept in the private study past this very door.
I gripped the brass handle. It turned with a smooth, oiled click that sounded like thunder in the dead of night.
The room inside wasn't a bedroom or a standard study. It was a sprawling, high-tech command center. Wall-to-wall monitors flickered with live feeds of every room in the mansion, the surrounding forest, and the perimeter gates. But one screen in the center showed a feed that didn't belong to the property—it showed an underground warehouse down by the Chicago riverfront, stamped with the Vale shipping logo.
And on that screen, men in tactical gear were loading wooden crates marked with biohazard symbols.
"You have a terrible habit of ignoring instructions, Miss Reed."
I froze. Dominic Vale stepped out from the shadows near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, holding a crystal tumbler of amber whiskey. He wasn't wearing his suit jacket; his white dress shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, revealing jagged, faded scars that cut across his skin like barbed wire.
"I... I was looking for extra cleaning supplies," I lied, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to sound brave.
Dominic took a slow sip of his drink, his cold eyes scanning my face. He didn't look angry. That was what terrified me most. He looked intensely, dangerously curious.
"There are no cleaning supplies in the north wing, Clara," he said softly, using my first name for the first time. "People who come in here usually want to steal secrets. Are you a spy, Clara? Or are you just stupid?"
"Neither," I answered, holding my ground as best I could with a bruised ribcage. "I'm a girl whose brother is dying, working for a man who locks up his own son while his house is wired like a CIA bunker. If I'm stupid, Mr. Vale, it's because I learned it from watching how desperate people survive in Chicago."
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Dominic’s expression hardened. In two long strides, he closed the distance between us, backing me gently against the heavy oak door. He towered over me, smelling of cedarwood, gunpowder, and expensive scotch.
"You think you understand what's happening here?" Dominic whispered, his face inches from mine. "Noah didn't break two years ago when his mother died. She didn't die in a roadside ambush, Clara. Someone sent a message. And that message is still living inside the walls of this house."
