Chapter 3 The Voss Estate

The Voss estate sat behind iron gates on the northern cliffs of Ashford Bay, a compound so large it had its own weather, fog rolling in from the ocean and settling over the grounds like a curtain nobody bothered to draw back. Mira had been here eleven times before, always for the same reason. A car would collect her from her apartment above the bookstore, drive her through the gates, and drop her at a side entrance where a member of the household staff would fit her earpiece and brief her on the night’s event before sending her straight back out to whatever gala or dinner required her presence.

She had never gone further than that side entrance. 

She had never seen the inside of the house. In eleven visits she had built her own picture of what lay beyond that door, imagining marble hallways and locked rooms, a family hiding something behind all that old stone and older money. She used to tell herself the imagining was just boredom, the kind of thing anyone would do waiting in a car for hours at a time. Lately she had started to suspect it was something closer to hope, though hope for what, she could not have said.

Today was different.

“Mrs. Voss would like to speak with you before tonight’s fundraiser,” the driver told her, and Mira felt a flicker of unease at the words, because in eleven jobs, Eleanor Voss had never once requested a private meeting.

The gates opened slower than she remembered, iron swinging inward to reveal grounds that stretched further than she had ever noticed from the side entrance alone. Gardens lined the drive, trimmed with a precision that suggested a small army of gardeners worked in shifts to keep them that way. Somewhere beyond the hedges, she caught the sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs, a sound that never quite left this part of the city no matter how far inland you traveled.

The staff member who greeted her at the door was new, young, nervous in a way that suggested she had not been working here long. She led Mira through a hallway lined with portraits of Voss ancestors, stern-faced men and women who all seemed to be judging her for the silk dress she had not yet changed into, and finally into a sitting room where Eleanor Voss waited with two cups of tea already poured.

Eleanor was sixty years old and looked at it only in the silver of her hair, everything else about her sharp and composed, the kind of woman who had spent decades learning how to control a room without raising her voice. She wore simple gray, no jewelry beyond a thin wedding band she had never removed, though Mira had heard whispers that Julian’s father had passed years before the accident that took the older son. Grief seemed to sit on this family in layers, one loss stacked carefully on top of another, hidden behind good posture and expensive tea sets.

“Sit,” Eleanor said, and it was not a request.

Mira sat.

“You have done good work for this family,” Eleanor said, folding her hands in her lap. “Better than the woman before you. Better than I expected.”

“Thank you,” Mira said carefully, unsure where this was going.

“Julian speaks of you,” Eleanor continued, and something in her tone made Mira’s pulse quicken. 

“More than he has spoken of anyone in years.”

Mira’s mouth went dry. She thought of the terrace, of the fear in his voice, of the way he had said her real name like it mattered. “We have never met, Mrs. Voss. 

I only know him through the earpiece.”

“I am aware of the terms of the contract,” Eleanor said. 

“I wrote half of them myself.” She studied Mira for a long moment, the kind of look that made Mira feel like she was being weighed on a scale she could not see. 

“My son does not let people close. Not since his brother died.”

The words landed heavy in the room. Mira had heard whispers about an older Voss brother, a car accident years ago that had never been fully explained in the press, but she had never dared ask Julian about it, not once in eleven jobs. The Understudy Clause did not allow for that kind of question.

“I did not know he had a brother,” Mira said carefully.

“Most people do not remember,” Eleanor said, and something flickered behind her composed expression, something that looked almost like grief carefully folded away. “The accident was five years ago. Julian has not appeared in public since. Until you.”

Mira set her teacup down, her hands unsteady. “I am only playing a role, Mrs. Voss. I am not really his fiancée.”

“I know that,” Eleanor said. “But he has started requesting you by name for every event, when the contract allows him to request any representative the agency assigns. That is not something my son does.” 

She leaned forward slightly. “I am telling you this because I think you deserve to understand what you are part of, even if the contract forbids you from understanding the man himself.”

Mira thought of the terrace at the Meridian, the fear that had crept into Julian’s voice, the way he had refused to explain what he had seen. She thought of the way he thanked her when no one else ever had. 

Whatever this family was hiding, it was clearly heavier than shyness, heavier than grief alone could account for.

Before Mira could respond, a sound came from the hallway, sharp and sudden, a door slamming somewhere deep in the house, followed by raised voices she could not quite make out. Eleanor’s composed expression cracked for just a moment, fear flashing across her face before she smoothed it away.

“That will be all for today,” Eleanor said, standing abruptly. “Prepare for tonight’s fundraiser. The car will collect you at seven.”

Mira stood too, her mind spinning with questions she was not allowed to ask, and as she was led back toward the side entrance, she caught a glimpse down a hallway she had never noticed before, a hallway that ended in a heavy door with a small red light glowing above the frame.

A door that, she suspected, led to a room where a man she had never seen spent his life watching the world through cameras and speaking to her through wires, hiding from something far bigger than shyness.