Chapter 6
He didn't ask me if I wanted to stay.
He told me I was going to.
We were still in the hallway outside his office. My phone sat dark on the little table where he'd set it after tracing the number, and the light above us made the cream walls look yellow. He stood between me and the stairs like he'd already decided where I could and couldn't go.
"You're not leaving tonight," he said.
I stared at him. "I have to check on my brother."
"He's where he was an hour ago. You leaving puts him at more risk, not less."
I felt my knuckles throb when I curled my hand. The skin was still cracked, red from scrubbing the kitchen grout that afternoon. "You don't get to tell me I can't go see him. That's my job to protect him."
"It is your job," he said, and his voice stayed level. "Which is why you're going to stay inside these walls until I handle the crew that called you."
That word again — crew — made my stomach drop. I shook my head before he finished.
"If I don't show up tomorrow, they'll fire me," I said. "If I stay locked in here, I look like I can't handle my own problems. I already — I already owe you for the wage advance. I can't owe you for this too."
"You don't owe me for staying safe," he said. "You work here. That means when someone threatens your family over a debt tied to this house, they threaten my house."
I swallowed. "I'm the maid, not —"
"You're Sadia," he cut in, quiet. "And right now that matters more than the uniform."
For a second neither of us moved. I could hear the soft hum of the air conditioning and my own breathing, too fast. His hands were at his sides, tattoos stark against his neck in the warm light, his black shirt still unbuttoned at the collar from earlier.
He stepped back half a step, giving me space but not a path. "If you walk out that door tonight, they clock you. They know where you go. They wait at his place. You want that?"
I didn't. The image he'd put in my head — someone waiting near my brother's bed — was exactly what the voice on the phone had wanted me to picture. My shoulders sank before I could stop them.
"No," I whispered.
He nodded once. "Then stay."
He led me down the hall past his office, past the door I'd been slumped against when he found me crying. We turned at the dark wood trim toward the east wing where I never cleaned except on Thursdays. He stopped at a door I'd always thought was a linen closet and pushed it open.
It wasn't.
The guest room was bigger than my whole apartment back home. A made bed with a gray quilt, a dresser, a window with actual curtains, a bathroom with a door that locked. Warm light from a lamp on the nightstand, not the overhead fluorescents of the staff quarters in the back.
"This isn't the maid's room," I said.
"No," he said. "That room has a thin lock and a window that faces the service drive. This one doesn't. Door's solid, it locks from inside. You keep the key."
He set a small brass key on the dresser. Then he opened the closet — empty hangers, a folded blanket — and pulled the curtains closed.
"There are people in this house at night," he went on. "My man at the gate. Elena comes early for the kitchen. No one comes down this hall unless I tell them to. You need anything, you text me. You don't open for anyone else."
I ran my hand over the quilt. It was soft in a way that made me feel suddenly embarrassed for my uniform, for the apron I still had tied at my waist. "You make it sound like a hotel. I still work here."
"You still work here," he agreed. "Tomorrow doesn't change. Tonight you sleep behind a locked door."
I looked at the key, then at him. His expression hadn't softened, exactly, but his eyes weren't closed off the way they'd been in the hallway earlier. He was watching me decide.
"If I stay," I said slowly, "it's until you talk to them. Not forever. And I still check on my brother first thing in the morning. I need to hear his voice."
"You will," he said. "I'll have my phone on. If anything moves near him, you'll know before I do."
That was the part that finally tipped me. Not the nice room or the lock, but that he would tell me instead of handling it without me. I nodded, and felt my throat get tight again.
"Okay," I said. "Tonight. For him."
He exhaled, just enough that I saw his chest fall. "Get out of the uniform if you want. There're folded clothes in the dresser — my sister left them. Or don't. Up to you."
He backed toward the door.
"Where will you be?" I asked.
He paused with his hand on the brass handle. "Gone for a few hours. To finish what we started on the phone."
My hand tightened on the quilt. "You're going to them."
"I told you I would," he said. "They gave you an hour, Sadia. I'm going to give them a different one."
He didn't wait for me to argue. He pulled the hallway door shut enough to leave it ajar, and I heard his steps go back toward the office, then the heavier sound of the front door opening and closing. A lock turned.
May you like
I stood alone in the guest room, the key cold in my palm. Through the curtains I could see the mansion's exterior lights on the driveway and nothing else — no street, no sidewalk, just his property. Safe, and small.
I locked the door from the inside and sat on the edge of the bed, my phone face-up beside me, waiting for it to stay silent.
