Chapter3

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Dragging my mop bucket, I backed into the furthest cubicle of the maids' break room and kicked the door shut behind me. The screen lit up with the estate’s logistics group chat. Forty-seven members, all bottom-tier staff. Normally, it was strictly used for shift schedules and supply notices. But right now, the message pinned at the top was from an encrypted ID—a string of randomized characters.

"A warehouse at the North Yard impound was just cleared. Three vats of highly concentrated sulfuric acid. The piping was just hooked up. The Boss ordered it himself—once he finds the woman who slipped into his lounge that night, he’s taking her down there personally. Going to melt her until not even the bone dust remains."

The message sat there for two minutes. Then, it was deleted.

Dead silence reigned in the chat thread. No one asked questions; no one replied. Anyone who had survived working at this estate for more than a year understood the unspoken rule: an ID capable of broadcasting and wiping a message like that within two minutes belonged to mid-level management, at the very least. It didn't matter if the threat was real or a bluff. What mattered was that someone was purposefully spreading it.

Staring at the lingering cache of those words on my screen, my legs gave out. My knees slammed against the cold tiles.

Sulfuric acid vats. Melted. Bone dust.

I scrambled up on my hands and knees, yanked open the utility locker behind me, and shoved myself inside, locking the door tight. I clamped a hand ruthlessly over my mouth to keep my ragged breaths from leaking through my fingers.

He didn’t remember it was me.

And yet, here I was, crouching right inside the blast radius of his public warning. Camouflaged as just another maid.

Rushed footsteps clicked outside the locker.

"Elara! Where the hell are you?" The sharp voice of Mrs. Gale, the head housekeeper, echoed from the end of the hall. "It’s been fifteen minutes! The Boss’s coffee still isn't in his study. Are you trying to get us all killed?"

I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched my own thigh completely hard. When I pushed the locker door open and stepped out, my legs were still like jelly. But after a year and a half of working at the Vance estate, the one thing I had learned was never to let anyone see me stumble.

The black coffee on the prep counter was already half-cold. I picked up the silver tray and headed for the third floor.

Two armed guards stood at the stair landing. Two more guarded the far end of the third-floor corridor. Double the security from yesterday. Thick, plush carpet muffled my footsteps along the final stretch leading to the study.

Three days ago, down in the lobby, I heard him order someone to be "snapped by the neck and dumped in the Hudson." Today, I saw "bones melted in acid" in a cached chat log. Two different versions, dragging toward the exact same target.

I couldn't confess. Coming clean meant dragging the unborn child in my womb down to the grave with me.

But the Dowager's passing remark—"eyes that will stir up massive trouble"—had been looping in my head for days. She suspected something. And if her eyes could see it, others would too. Valentina already had her sights on me. All it would take was for her to spot me throwing up one more time, or notice the tight stretch of my uniform skirt across my waist when I bent over. They wouldn't need security footage or fingerprints then.

I had to test him. Not to beg for his mercy, but to confirm one crucial detail: was his memory of that night completely blank, or did he already know something and was just waiting for the fish to bite the hook?

Reaching the end of the third floor, I found the heavy oak door to his study half-ajar. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open with the edge of my tray.

Asher sat rigidly behind his massive desk. Three monitors glowed simultaneously in front of him: the left showed playback of the estate's perimeter cameras, the center displayed staff entry logs from two months ago, and the right held a roster I couldn't clearly make out. Cracked pieces of smashed listening bugs littered the dark rug. I approached with my head bowed, placing the coffee cup near the edge of the mahogany surface.

"Boss, your coffee."

Asher didn't look up. His fountain pen slashed a violent red 'X' across a document.

I gripped the edge of my tray tighter.

"Boss."

The pen stopped. His eyes remained locked on the screens. "Speak."

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. "What if... the woman from that night three months ago... was forced? What if she didn't want—"

Utter silence instantly consumed the study. Asher slowly turned his head. His cold, dark-grey eyes landed on my face. In the very next second, he snatched the mug of black coffee, saucer and all, and hurled it violently at the wall just behind my shoulder!

Crash—!

The ceramic exploded inches from my ear. Scalding liquid splattered across my right shoulder.

I didn't even have time to blink shut. I instinctively flinched, and a thin, sharp sting slowly bloomed across my cheek.

Asher stalked around the desk, stopping barely a foot away from me. He stood tall, a looming silhouette of sheer menace.

"Forced?" he repeated the word. "In the Vance family's world, there is no such thing as being forced. Didn't you know that?"

He dropped his voice to a dangerous, deadly whisper.

"In this house, anyone who climbs into my bed meets exactly one fate." He stared at me, his gaze briefly sweeping over the blood trickling down my cheek. "I don't care what your status is or what your reasons were. Scheming against me is a capital offense."

He leaned in slightly.

"Even if she escapes into hell itself," he gritted out, word by excruciating word, "I will drag her out. And burn her to ash. Do you understand?"

I opened my mouth, but my tight throat squeezed to produce a sound.

He straightened his posture, dismissing me with a sideways glance. "Get out."

The moment I turned around, my knees buckled. I braced the tray against the doorframe to keep myself from tripping over the threshold. The two guards in the corridor shot me a fleeting look, then quickly averted their eyes. At the Vance estate, a servant walking out of the study with a bleeding face wasn't rare. What was rare was a servant who could still walk out on their own two feet.

I kept walking, leaving the blood on my face untouched.

Only when I rounded the corner and slipped into the narrow maid's passageway did I finally stop. I raised the back of my hand and dragged it across my cheek—dark red, already half-dried on my skin. I stared down at the blood smudged on the back of my hand. Then, I slowly pressed my palm flat against my lower stomach.

Confessing meant death. Staying meant death. But confessing would kill the baby right alongside me, while staying gave me at least two more days.

Two days. I had counted. The digital display on the electronic lockdown gates at the end of the hall showed the countdown: two days until the red alert code was lifted. In two days, I either found a way out with my child, or...

I leaned heavily against the wall. The heavy thud of the changing guard's boots echoed from the far end of the passageway, grinding against the floorboards, the tempo steadily drawing closer.

I turned and walked in the opposite direction. Toward the kitchens. There were sinks there, and mops, and endless grueling labor. Inside the Vance estate, if a maid stood entirely still for more than three minutes, someone would remember her face.

Tracing the bloody scratch on my cheek, I stepped out beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.

The Hudson River three days ago. The acid vats today. Same man. The escalating methods of execution meant only one thing: his anxiety was mounting. He wouldn't let a single clue slip by—and here I was, standing right dead center of all his moving pieces, masquerading as a lowly servant who had just tumbled out of the study with her face bleeding.

Two days. I only had two days left.

I twisted the faucet on and thrusted my blood-stained hand into the freezing water. The scarlet streaks bloomed at the bottom of the stainless-steel basin before being swiftly washed down the drain.

Just like the Hudson River. Just like the vats of acid. Everything flowed toward the exact same end.