Chapter 3 Three

• Sera didn’t sleep.
• Not because the bed wasn’t soft it was too soft. The kind of softness that cradled you like a secret, made you forget where you were. That was dangerous.
• The bedroom was dark, minimalist, eerily quiet. She lay flat on her back, fully clothed, one hand clutching her sister’s photo in the dark like a talisman.
• Elise. Two years gone.
• Two weeks alive.
• Lucien knew something. She was sure of it. But what chilled her more was the look in his eyes when he showed her the photo.
• Like it wasn’t meant to exist. Like he didn’t want her to see it, but something made him show her anyway.
• She sat up just after 4 a.m., the digital clock’s glow cutting a line across the floor. No footsteps. No voices. The house felt asleep.
• Or sedated.
• Sera slipped into her boots, silently padded to the door. It wasn’t locked.
• That felt like a test too.
• She moved quietly down the corridor. Cameras watched. She didn’t look up, didn’t slow her pace. If they were going to watch her, she’d let them.
• But she needed something. Anything.
• She passed what looked like a study. The door was ajar.
• Inside: a wall of monitors. Black and white surveillance feeds. Hallways. Elevators. The front gate. But also…
• A bedroom.
• Her bedroom.
• A feed on her. A live one.
• She swallowed hard.
• On the desk beneath the monitors sat an old notebook. Worn. Leather-bound. She flipped it open, scanning the pages.
• Drawings. Maps. Time logs. Written in frantic cursive.
• Her heart stopped.
• Elise’s handwriting.
• The notebook was hers.
• Page after page of notes about someone called Mara. Entries with dates. Times Lucien was away. Phrases like “He knows” and “Don’t trust the glass.” Then…
• A last scrawled entry. Half-torn.
• If you find this, don’t ask him. Follow the light behind the—
• The sentence ended mid-word.
• “Put it down.”
• The voice came from behind her low, unreadable.
• Lucien.
• Sera froze, still clutching the book.
• She turned slowly. He stood in the doorway, barefoot, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the kind of calm that felt like a cliff edge.
• “You were watching me,” she said.
• “I watch everyone in my house.”
• “You kept her notebook.”
• “I keep everything that might hurt me.”
• She stepped toward him, eyes locked. “Why didn’t you give it to me?”
• Lucien studied her. “Because not everything your sister wrote was true.”
• Sera opened her mouth to respond.
• But the monitors behind him flickered.
• A new feed appeared. Static. Then a video.
• A woman.
• Elise.
• Looking directly at the camera.
• She was alive. And she looked scared.
• But what she whispered wasn’t what Sera expected.
• It was a name.
• Not Lucien’s.
• Someone else’s.
• And the moment she said it the screen went black.
• Sera lunged forward, but the screen was already blank static erased, the feed gone like it had never been real.
• “What the hell was that?” she demanded, turning on Lucien. “Why is there a live feed of her?”
• Lucien didn’t move. “That wasn’t live.”
• Her stomach twisted. “Don’t lie to me.”
• “I’m not,” he said, voice low, deliberate. “That was recorded. But not by me.”
• Sera stared at him, heart hammering. “Then who?”
• Lucien finally stepped fully into the room, the light from the monitors washing over his face. The weariness in his eyes wasn’t exhaustion it was something deeper. Older.
• “I’ve been trying to find that out for over a year.”
• His words hit like ice water.
• She blinked. “You’ve been looking for her?”
• “Not the way you think.” He walked to the monitor, tapped a small keyboard built into the desk. Nothing came up. “That footage surfaced two months ago. Anonymous drive. No source. No metadata. Just the file.”
• “And you didn’t tell anyone?” Sera snapped.
• Lucien turned to her. “Who would I tell, Sera? The police? The same ones that buried her case? The ones her disappearance embarrassed?”
• Sera opened her mouth, then shut it.
• He had a point. And she hated that.
• “So you’ve been watching it on a loop for fun?” she asked, voice cracking.
• “No,” he said. “I’ve been watching it for the moment I missed.”
• “What moment?”
• “The lie.”
• Sera stepped back from him. “You think she lied?”
• “I think she was protecting someone,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Or hiding something.”
• The silence stretched, heavy.
• Then he said it.
• “The name she whispered did you catch it?”
• Sera nodded, her voice small. “Aiden.”
• Lucien’s jaw tightened.
• “Who is he?” she asked.
• Lucien didn’t answer right away. His fingers moved over the keyboard again. A new screen opened.
• A list of names.
• Dozens of them. Names crossed out. Red flags. Dossiers.
• Sera’s eyes scanned the page until she saw it.
• Aiden Mara.
• Her blood ran cold. “Mara… your assistant.”
• “She’s not my assistant,” Lucien said quietly.
• Sera looked at him. “Then what is she?”
• Lucien stared at the screen, something unreadable flickering in his gaze.
• “She’s the reason Elise disappeared.”
• Sera's breath hitched. The name pulsed in her head like a warning bell: Aiden Mara. The woman in black. The one who had scanned her, silent and precise. The one who hadn’t blinked when Lucien exposed her lies.
• “You said she’s not your assistant,” Sera said slowly, carefully. “Then what is she? Security? Handler? Spy?”
• Lucien exhaled through his nose. “Once, she was my shadow. I trusted her with everything. And Elise…” He trailed off, jaw flexing.
• “What happened?” Sera demanded. “Tell me.”
• “She got too close,” he said simply. “To something dangerous. To Mara.”
• Sera stepped forward. “You think Mara did something to her?”
• Lucien shook his head. “I think she let someone else do it. And now she’s covering her tracks.”
• Sera’s thoughts spun. “But Elise said Aiden. That’s a man’s name.”
• Lucien’s eyes darkened. “Aiden was Mara’s brother. Dead. Or at least, that’s what the records say.”
• “And you think.”
• “I don’t think anything,” he snapped. Then, quieter: “Not yet. But if Elise spoke his name before she disappeared, it means she found something. Something neither Mara nor I knew existed.”
• Sera’s hands trembled around Elise’s notebook.
• The last entry followed the light behind the...
• Behind the what?
• She turned toward the leather journal again, flipping through the pages. Half the writing was coded: symbols, shorthand. But one line stood out now more than ever, underlined three times in red ink.
• “Trust no one in glass.”
• Glass.
• Glass windows. Glass walls.
• Glass screens.
• Lucien stepped beside her, reading over her shoulder. He went very still.
• “What is it?” she asked.
• “I don’t have a single room in this penthouse without glass surveillance,” he said, voice flat. “If she wrote that, she was telling you not to trust what you see in here.”
• Sera looked up at him.
• For the first time, Lucien didn’t look composed.
• He looked unnerved.
• She barely had time to react when a soft chime echoed through the room.
• Lucien turned to a wall panel. A single red light was blinking.
• “What is that?” she asked.
• He pressed his palm against the glass panel. A screen lit up. A message:
• UNKNOWN DEVICE DETECTED. SURVEILLANCE FEED BREACHED.
• His jaw clenched. “We’re not alone.”
• The lights in the hallway outside flickered just once.
• Then everything went black.