The corridor smelled of beeswax and the lingering trace of rosemary. Rafaela was walking toward the staircase when Julien stepped out of nowhere and blocked her path.
She stopped short. It was the worst possible moment.
His jaw was set. He had that expression on his face, the one he wore when he'd been working himself up to something and was now committed to seeing it through, consequences be damned.
"Have you spoken to her?"
Rafaela could have played dumb. It would have been easy. She could have asked who he meant, and watched him sputter and backtrack and lose his nerve. But she was tired. A week of silence had worn something thin in her, and she didn't have the energy anymore.
"No," she said.
"At all?"
She didn't dignify that with a response. She stepped left to move past him. He stepped with her, and she pinned him with a stare that had made trained operatives reconsider their choices.
Julien did not reconsider. Or perhaps he was simply too foolish to know when to retreat. He opened his mouth, closed it. Frustration warred with disbelief on his face, as if she had personally offended him by being unable to bridge a gap he had no idea how to bridge himself.
"Well, that's stupid."
He turned and walked off toward the kitchen, muttering something under his breath. She caught the words stubborn and unbearable and possibly both of you, though she couldn't be sure.
She stood in the corridor for a long moment after he was gone. The draught from the windows found the gap between her collar and her neck. She could still hear his footsteps fading down the hall.
He wasn't wrong. The silence had lasted nearly a week now. Long enough to settle into the rooms and feel permanent.
She still saw Élisabeth everywhere. At breakfast, a tray carried into the library and returned an hour later with half the food untouched. In the garden, her right hand working the wheelchair's rims in steady strokes beneath the pale winter sun. Once in the corridor outside the drawing room, where their eyes had met for the briefest moment before Élisabeth wheeled past without a word.
None of it made the ache behind Rafaela's ribs any easier to carry.
By late afternoon, the light had begun to fail. Rafaela found herself in the morning room not because she wanted to be there, but because Beatrice had put out tea and small sandwiches and Julien had already claimed the armchair by the fire, and it was easier to stand near the window with a cup in her hands than to keep pacing the upper corridors like a ghost.
The morning room was smaller than the drawing room, its windows facing the garden, the last of the pale winter light catching the frost on the glass. A fire had been lit in the grate, and a sprig of rosemary stood in a small vase on the mantel. The curtains stirred in the draft. Outside, the trees at the edge of the lawn were losing their shape.
Julien was sprawled in his armchair, his knitting abandoned in his lap. Beatrice sat on the sofa, her teacup balanced on its saucer, her feet tucked neatly beneath her. Élisabeth was in her wheelchair near the fire, the flames catching the line of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder, the hand resting in her lap.
Rafaela stood near the window, her cup growing cold in her hands. She watched the frost melt on the grass and tried not to look at Élisabeth, but she was aware of her in the way you are of a tooth you've been told not to tongue.
Élisabeth never looked her way. Whether it was deliberate or simply easier, Rafaela couldn't tell anymore.
Élisabeth set down her teacup.
"Bea," she said quietly. "I'd like a bath, please. Before dinner."
Beatrice set down her saucer without hesitation and rose from the sofa.
"Of course, darling. I'll get it ready."
Beatrice crossed to the wheelchair and took the handles. She caught Rafaela's eye as she passed. The look lingered just long enough to leave Rafaela feeling she'd disappointed her. Then she wheeled Élisabeth out of the room, and the door clicked shut behind them.
Julien stared at Rafaela from his armchair. He didn't say a word but his silence carried all the hostility she could bear.
Rafaela set down her cup and left.
Upstairs, the bedroom was dim. The fire had burned down to ash hours ago and she hadn't bothered to rebuild it. She sat at the desk and opened her laptop, the screen casting a pale rectangle across the dark room.
She waited for the call to connect.
The screen lit with Dr. Schneider's face. She was already settling into her chair, her expression calm and unsurprised, as if she'd been waiting for Rafaela all day.
"Rafaela. It's good to see you."
"You too."
"How have things been?"
"It’s cold today," Rafaela said. "The frost hasn't melted off the lawn."
"Are you spending a lot of time looking out the window?"
Rafaela's gaze drifted to the window. The curtains were drawn, but she could feel the cold pressing against the glass.
"There isn’t much else to do." She let out a slow breath and rubbed her palms against her thighs. "She won't speak to me."
Schneider said nothing. She had never been in a hurry to rescue Rafaela from her own thoughts, and after months of these sessions, Rafaela knew the quiet was an invitation.
"She takes her meals in the library most times now. Wheels herself around the house. If we pass each other in the corridor, she just looks through me like I'm not there."
Schneider absorbed this. "And what is that like for you?"
Her first instinct was to shrug it off. She wanted to say it didn't matter. The excuse felt hollow.
"It's distracting," Rafaela said. "If she doesn't talk to me, I can't do my job."
Schneider nodded once. "Tell me about the silence."
"I don't know." She rubbed her palms against her thighs. "It's..." She frowned. "I know where she is most of the day. I know when she leaves the library." She looked down at her hands. "None of that matters. She still won’t speak to me."
“And how does that make you feel?”
Rafaela didn't answer. The ache in her chest was spreading upward into her throat, and still, Schneider waited.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she said, and her voice came out rougher than she intended. "I don't know why I'm still here. She made it clear she doesn't want me. And I'm still here. I don't know why I'm still here."
"Yes, you do," Schneider said gently.
Rafaela closed her eyes and drew a ragged breath.
"You know exactly why you're still there, Rafaela," Schneider said. "You're just not ready to admit it."
Rafaela lowered her eyes. There was nothing to argue with. That was what frightened her most.
Schneider shifted slightly in her chair. "Are you afraid of losing a client, Rafaela, or are you terrified of losing her?"
"It’s my job to keep her safe. Her silence makes that impossible."
"Well, now she’s angry because you lied, and rightfully so. But why does her anger feel like a threat to you?"
"It doesn't," Rafaela snapped. "It’s just annoying. The silence is loud."
Schneider tilted her head. "Silence is not loud, Rafaela. It’s just empty."
"No, it's not." Her voice rang through the room, sharp enough to startle even herself.
Schneider leaned forward. "Then tell me what it is."
Rafaela squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heels of her hands hard against her forehead. She tried to push the panic back down into her chest.
"When people stop talking," Rafaela said, her voice breaking. "It means they’re dead. You’re lying in a ditch in the dark, screaming, and nobody answers."
The words hung in the air like smoke, cold sweat breaking out across the back of her neck. She had never told anyone about the crash: not the DGSI psych evals, not in all the months with Schneider.
When Schneider spoke, her voice was careful, as if stepping onto fragile ground.
"Rafaela," she said softly. "Who didn't answer you?"
Rafaela stared at the screen. She wished, absurdly, that she could take the words back before Schneider had heard them. Her eyes were burning, and she was not going to cry. She was not going to—
A sharp burst of beeping tore through the room. Rafaela flinched so hard her chair screeched back across the floorboards. She lurched to her feet, her knee slamming into the underside of the desk. Pain shot up her leg as she staggered clear of the chair.
She knew that sound. The twenty or thirty seconds the security system gave you before it decided you were a threat, and after that the sirens. She had heard it exactly once before, during the walkthrough with the DGSI tech. She had never expected to hear it again. Not now. Not when the only people who knew this address were vetted and supposedly cleared.
"Sorry. I have to go." The words tumbled out of her mouth as she abandoned the laptop on the desk.
Whether Schneider answered, she never knew.
She dropped by the duffel at the foot of the bed, her hand finding the grip of the Sig Sauer. The slide racked with a clack. She was already running, leaving the laptop open and Schneider’s face frozen on the screen.
The beeping was louder out here, ricocheting off the walls and down the corridor, and she was already at the panel near the stairs because this was the drill, this was what she did. Her eyes found the display before her hand reached the keypad.
Zone 3. Rear garden.
Not a door. Not the gate. Whatever had triggered the alarm was outside, which meant her first priority was locating Élisabeth and locking the house down.
She took the stairs two at a time, her socks slipping on the worn oak, the Sig cold in her hand. Elisabeth's bedroom door stood half open. She shoved through it.
She shoved through the door, her gaze sweeping the room in the rhythm of someone clearing a space she already knew by heart. For one second, nothing seemed wrong. The bed was neatly made, the curtains still drawn against the fading afternoon, and the familiar scent of lavender lingered in the still air.
Her gaze snapped back, searching again as if she'd simply missed it. The book on the nightstand lay open. The blanket remained folded at the foot of the mattress. Everything was exactly where it should have been.
Everything except Élisabeth.
She stood in the doorway, staring at the empty room, her mind refusing to accept what she was looking at.
"Élisabeth?"
But she got nothing back.
Élisabeth wasn't there. Neither was her wheelchair.
The beeping died and the room seemed to hold its breath with her. Rafaela heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears.
She lurched forward, yanking the bathroom door open so hard it struck the wall. The room was dark, the taps dry, the towels hanging exactly as Beatrice had left them. No one had been in here. Of course no one had been in here.
She spun back toward the bedroom and sirens erupted, tearing through the house with a force that seemed to shake the walls, a relentless howl that swallowed every other sound. She felt it in her teeth, in the bones of her chest, in the soft place behind her eyes
Rafaela hit the doorframe, braced herself, and forced her legs forward.
The library.
Élisabeth had barely left it all week, retreating there every afternoon since everything between them had fallen apart. If she wasn't in her room, she'd be there. She had to.
Rafaela threw herself down the corridor, the siren clawing at her ears, and shoved the library door open with the heel of her palm.
The fire was low. The armchair was empty. On the side table, a skin had formed over a cold cup of tea.
"Élisabeth!"
Her eyes darted wildly through the room, catching on every place Élisabeth might have been. The chair by the window. The shelves. The corner beside the piano. The reading lamp still glowing against the gathering dusk.
No sign of Élisabeth. The certainty she'd been clinging to finally gave way.
Élisabeth wasn't in the house.
Her stomach lurched so violently she thought she might be sick. Cold spread through her chest, leaving everything inside her hollow, and she had never been so afraid in her life.
She turned and ran for the entrance hall.
The windows had already surrendered the last of the light. Beatrice was stumbling toward her from the direction of the kitchen, using the wall to brace her frail frame. She was saying something, but Rafaela couldn't hear her over the siren.
Rafaela reached her in three strides and caught her by the shoulders. The woman was trembling, her breath coming in shallow gasps, and her eyes were wide with fear.
"It’s them, isn’t it?" Beatrice whispered, her voice shaking. "The people after her. They’ve found us."
Rafaela didn't answer. She didn’t know, and that was the worst of it. She had only the alarm and the knowledge that she couldn’t find Élisabeth. The certainty she'd carried since arriving at Le Grand Chêne—that she could always account for Élisabeth, always be where she was, always get to her first—had fractured because of a wall she'd helped build. If only Élisabeth had been speaking to her. If only she'd found the courage to speak first. She would have known. She would have known where to look.
Instead she was standing in the middle of a screaming house, asking the one question she should never have needed to ask.
"Where is she?"
For a moment Beatrice looked at her as though the question itself made no sense.
"Please, Bea. Where is Élisabeth?"
"Outside."
Beatrice's voice shook. "Julien... he wanted her to have some fresh air. They're by the rose trellis."
She faltered, her eyes darting toward the windows before returning to Rafaela.
"How long?" Rafaela heard the urgency in her own voice.
"I don't know." Beatrice pressed a trembling hand to her chest. "Twenty minutes, perhaps. A little less. I wasn't watching the time."
The floor seemed to drop out from under Rafaela's feet. Zone 3 covered the rose trellis. The garden sat directly against the tensioned wire of the rear fence.
Élisabeth was out there with only Julien for protection. Her grip on the Sig tightened until her knuckles ached.
Beatrice's eyes dropped to the gun in Rafaela's hand and the old woman flinched, her face draining of what little color remained. She took a shaky step back.
"You don't think it's him, do you? He wouldn't," Beatrice stammered. "Rafaela, please. Julien would never hurt her."
Rafaela looked at the woman's trusting face. Julien would never hurt her. She didn't know if she believed that. In her world, anyone could be turned, anyone could be broken.
It didn't matter. If he had done something to Élisabeth, she was going to kill him. She was going to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until he stopped moving. But first, she needed to find Élisabeth.
"The panel." Rafaela's voice came out steadier than she had any right to expect. "Bea. Do you remember the code?"
Beatrice dragged her gaze up. "Yes. I remember it."
"Good," Rafaela said. "Disarm it. "Call the security gate and tell them we have a breach at the rear fence. Then lock the door behind me and wait for my call."
Beatrice stood up a little straighter and nodded.
"Four-four-seven-two," Beatrice muttered. "Call the gate. Lock the door. Wait for the call."
Beatrice was still chanting the numbers when Rafaela burst through the side door. Outside, the December air closed over her, stealing her breath. She sprinted away from the house, her feet sinking into the soft, wet grass of the lawn before skidding onto the frost preserved in the shadow of the manor wall. Losing her footing, she caught herself against the wall, scraping her palm, and pushed off again.
The siren faded behind her, in its place came the slap of her footsteps and the ragged tear of her own breathing.
"Élisabeth!" she called, her voice cracking on the second syllable.
The lawn gave way to bare flowerbeds where the earth was frozen into sharp ridges. She stumbled, her ankle rolling beneath her and she bit back a cry and forced her weight back onto it.
She ran straight for the fence where the treeline formed a black wall against the sky, but the silence terrified her.
Not knowing what she would find when she reached them hollowed her out.
Please let her be all right. Please.
A metallic racket killed her stride. She stumbled, her feet skidding on the wet grass as she tried to listen over the sound of her own gasping breath. Ahead in the dark, the wire fence was rattling violently with the weight of something thrashing against it.
She veered toward the noise. "Élisabeth!"
"Rafaela! Over here!"
Julien. She had found him.
His voice was strained, coming from somewhere near the rose trellis. She followed it, her lungs burning. At last, something she could run toward.
The herb garden blurred past, giving way to the wall where the climbing roses grew, their branches bare and skeletal against the darkening sky. Just beyond them lay the inner fence, and somewhere in the shadows, Élisabeth.
Rafaela ran.
Thank you for reading. If you’d like to support my writing, you can here.
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This has been the hardest chapter to get right. The tension, terror and adrenaline have been quite hard to pin down. I didn't want to delay it any further with my nerves and all. So here goes.
I hope you're having a wonderful time 🩷
I have several questions. Do you want me to post them here?
Oh good grief! What a place to end the chapter. I can't wait for the next one!