Chapter 1
I kept the burner phone against my ear, though the line had gone quiet.
Victor’s hand remained extended between us. He didn’t move closer. The pistol hung at his other thigh, angled toward the floor now instead of toward anything in the corridor. His face stayed hard, but something had changed behind his eyes. He was listening to the silence on the call.
I looked at the office door beside me. Dark wood. Brass handle. My reflection in the polished panel was broken by the grain: pulled-back hair, plain uniform, red eyes, hands that looked burned even though the damage had come slowly, day after day, from bleach.
The caller breathed once.
Then the voice came through the cracked speaker, low and almost bored.
“Touch a single hair on his head, and I'll tear down everything you own.”
The call ended.
I lowered the phone a fraction. My thumb hovered over the screen. The message from the same number still glowed through the cracks, the words blurred where the glass had split across the middle. Sam. Hospital. A warning that had known too much.
Victor waited.
“What did he say?” he asked.
My throat tightened. “He knows where my brother is.”
That wasn’t an answer, and we both knew it. Victor’s gaze moved to the phone, then to my face.
“I’m not asking you to tell me everything in this hallway,” he said. “I’m asking you to let me see what put you on the floor.”
The corridor seemed to narrow around us. Somewhere farther down the mansion, a clock marked the quarter hour. The sound was soft and ordinary, which made the phone feel even more dangerous in my hand.
“If I give it to you, you’ll call someone.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll send people to the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“And they’ll know I told you.”
Victor’s jaw tightened. “They already know you’re frightened. Whoever made that call wanted you to understand that.”
I pressed the phone against my knee. “You don’t know that.”
“I know the difference between a request and a warning.” His voice lowered. “That was a warning.”
I hated that he sounded certain. I hated more that certainty made the room feel less impossible.
He shifted the pistol farther from me and set it on the narrow console table beside the office door. He did it slowly, giving me time to watch every movement. Then he raised both empty hands, palms open.
“I’m not going to take it from you,” he said. “You decide.”
My fingers shook harder. The skin across my knuckles split where I had clenched them. A small spot of blood darkened the cuff of my uniform.
Victor noticed. He looked at my hands, but he didn’t comment on them. That restraint unsettled me more than pity would have.
“I can arrange security at the hospital,” he said. “Not men who make a scene. People who can check the entrances, verify who has access to Sam, and stay there until we know what this is.”
“You can’t just put guards around him.”
“I can arrange protection. You can refuse it.”
I looked toward the staircase. Leaving the phone with him would mean trusting the man whose office I had been afraid to enter, whose presence still filled the corridor like a locked door. Keeping it meant walking out alone with a threat aimed at the only family I had.
The burner vibrated again.
Both of us looked down.
No new call. Only the screen waking beneath my palm. The last message remained there, a short line that made my stomach turn because it included the hospital’s name.
Victor didn’t reach for it.
I swallowed and held the phone out.
“Don’t erase anything,” I said.
“I won’t.”
“Don’t call the number.”
“Not without telling you.”
That promise landed differently than I expected. Not warm. Not comforting. Just precise.
I placed the phone in his hand.
He took it carefully, touching only the edges. His eyes moved over the cracked display. The controlled fury in his face became clearer when he read the message. He didn’t swear. He didn’t ask me why I had kept it from him. He simply turned the screen toward the light from the brass wall sconce and studied the number, the time, and the wording.
“I need to get you to the hospital,” he said.
“I can drive.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I can still drive.”
“I believe you.” He looked up. “You don’t have to let me drive. I can arrange a car, and you can sit in the back. Or you can take your own car and I’ll follow. Those are your choices.”
The words made something inside me loosen, then tighten again. Choices were unfamiliar when they came from someone with power over my job, my housing, and the entire quiet structure of the estate.
“What happens to my work?” I asked.
“Nothing tonight.”
“That’s not the same as tomorrow.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
For the first time, he looked tired rather than intimidating. The pistol remained untouched on the console. The phone rested in his hand between us, no longer mine but not fully his either.
“I’ll go with you,” I said. “You don’t make decisions for Sam. Or me.”
Victor nodded once. “Agreed.”
He picked up the pistol, but held it low and away as he stepped aside to clear the corridor. I rose slowly, using the office door for balance. My knees hurt from the floor. My hands burned. The hospital threat waited in his palm.
At the end of the hall, the mansion’s lights glowed over polished wood and framed paintings. Everything looked composed, expensive, untouched.
Victor glanced at the phone again.
“Whoever sent this expected you to be alone,” he said.
May you like
I pulled my sleeves over my hands and followed him toward the stairs.
“I was,” I said. “Until you opened the door.”
