Chapter 1: The Door Behind the Library
The estate was a labyrinth of glass, cold marble, and secrets. My existence was limited to the peripheral areas: the kitchens, the laundry rooms, the servant quarters, and the designated cleaning routes. But that evening, the household was in an uproar. A massive gala was planned for the following weekend, and the inventory for the ballroom had been misplaced.
The head housekeeper had barked at me to check the storage wing behind the library. I had been there before, or so I thought. But as I navigated the winding, dimly lit corridors, I took a wrong turn. The architecture of the Carter estate was designed to confuse, and I found myself in a wing I didn't recognize.
There was a door at the end of a long, shadowed hall. It wasn't the ornate, mahogany-finished door of the executive wing; it was reinforced steel, flush with the wall, with no handle—only a biometric scanner. Or, at least, it should have been locked. As I approached, it clicked. A security update must have been in progress, leaving the lock disengaged for a split second.
I only intended to see if it was a supply closet. I pushed. The door glided open on silent hinges.
The room inside was dark, save for a single spotlight beaming down on a central display. It wasn't a room of luxury; it was a room of mourning.
Ethan Carter was standing in the center. He wasn't the titan of industry I served every morning. His shirt was torn, his hair disheveled, and his knuckles were raw and bleeding, as if he had been punching concrete walls. He was staring at a glass case that held a woman’s vintage silk scarf—the only remnant of someone he had lost.
He heard the creak of the door.
He spun around, his eyes wild, his posture feral. "Get out!" he roared, his voice cracking with a vulnerability that turned my blood to ice.
I stood frozen. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes, but it wasn't the look he gave a servant. It was the look of a man who had finally found a witness to his hidden hell. He lunged toward me, not to strike, but to close the space. He stopped inches from me, his chest heaving.
"You," he whispered, his voice trembling. "You were there. Two years ago. The day she died. You were the girl in the park who handed her that umbrella."
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I blinked, the memory rushing back—a rainy day, a woman crying, a stranger in a yellow coat. "I... I didn't know who she was, sir."
Ethan leaned his forehead against the doorframe, his massive frame shaking. "You saw the truth of the last moment of her life. And you have been working in my house for two years without saying a word."
