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Chapter 4: Eyes On The Wall
By morning, the rain had stopped, but the estate felt no calmer.
Clouds hung heavy in the sky like a lid over a boiling pot. Heira woke before the bell, chest tight, limbs aching, her body still running on nerves rather than rest. She didn't move at first. Just lay there, listening—to the drip of water from the cracked laundry pipe, to the distant hum of someone's voice on the phone upstairs. Something had shifted in the past few days since Declan spoke to her, and it hadn't settled.
She got up when the bell rang.
Her new duties sent her to the storage rooms near the west wing, where boxes of gala supplies were stacked ceiling-high. She wasn't allowed near the main arrangements just the back stock. Extra linens, unused centerpieces, crates of wine to be inventoried and dusted. It was busywork. Invisible work.
She knew the kind well.
She worked in silence, pausing only when the floor creaked above her. People passed back and forth planners, caterers, security. She kept her head down and her ears open. There was more movement in the estate now, more whispers. Someone was always on the phone. No one said what they were thinking not that she was used to any different .
By midday, the scent of perfume and hairspray filled the halls. Calliope's stylist had arrived early for fittings. The girl's laugh cut through the walls like static. Her mother followed behind her, voice clipped, asking for shoes, accessories, something about press angles.
No one spoke to Heira.
But she caught fragments shallow, cold things. "The floral arches are too wide—" "What do you mean Declan cancelled?" "He's not cancelling, he's delaying—" "Did William say why he left again?"
She took the hint. Avoiding the main floor.
In the service hall, she found a paper pinned quietly to the board. It wasn't addressed to her, but she recognized her name—marked in faint pencil beside "sub-level corridor maintenance." A half-hour window. One-time task.
Odd.
She checked the board again. No other servant was listed for the job.
—
The sub-level was a leftover from another era, an era before she left and when she was still young.
Technically a basement, but larger and older, carved beneath the east wing like an afterthought. Only one access door worked now, and it stuck when she pulled it open. The air was stale, laced with dust and rust.
She flicked on the bare overhead light and stepped inside.
The corridor stretched long, lined with metal shelves and aging equipment—unused speakers, crates of outdated tech, a half-covered mirror warped at the edges. Her job was vague: clean, organize. No cameras were visible here. No footsteps echoed from above.
That's what struck her most. The silence.
She got to work anyway. Dusting. Rearranging.
Ten minutes in, she found the safe.
Not large—built into the lower wall behind a shelving unit—but new, secured with a digital keypad and a second manual lock beneath. She hadn't seen it before. Probably not meant to.
The shelf in front was nearly empty. Clearly someone hadn't been trying very hard to hide it.
She stood staring for too long.
It didn't matter. She didn't have the code. She wasn't stupid enough to try.
But as she turned back toward the crates, she noticed something else—on the wall just beside the safe, scratched faintly into the plaster, small and crooked:
"HEIRA."
Nothing else. Just her name.
As if someone had needed her to see it.
Her breath caught in her throat. A trick of the eye, maybe. But the letters were real. Carved—not recent, but rather old, at least a decade old. Not from the servants. Not from anyone she could place.
She didn't linger.
She finished the task as quickly as she could and left the sub-level without looking back. The next servant to enter would find everything spotless. And no trace of her ever being there.
But all afternoon, her hands shook.
—
Later, she passed the office. Her father's door was closed, but she could hear raised voices. Not angry—tight. Urgent. William's voice, then someone else's. Declan.
Heira paused just long enough to catch a line:
"If you can't keep her contained, the board will reconsider everything."
And William: "She hasn't done anything. You said she was compliant."
Declan again, quieter: "She was. But eyes are turning now, if I could notice her be sure that others would too. You let this simmer too long."
She moved on before she was caught.
Back in the laundry room, she folded napkins methodically. One corner to the next. The same pattern. The same rhythm. Her thoughts swirled.
She'd known they were watching her. But there was something deeper now. Not just suspicion. Control. Containment. Someone was worried. Someone was unsure how long she would stay silent before she makes a move or what even her next thought of action would be.
She wondered if they were right to be.
—
The day before the gala, she was summoned again—this time by the housekeeper, who looked almost nervous when she gave the instruction.
"Mr. Rourke asked for you," she said, barely meeting Heira's eyes. "You're to attend to his suite. Just cleaning. Fresh towels. That's all."
Heira didn't answer. She nodded and took the linen cart.
Declan Rourke had been assigned one of the upstairs rooms usually reserved for foreign dignitaries or long-time donors. Spacious. Impeccable. Cold.
She knocked once. No answer.
She entered.
The room was empty but lived-in—suit jacket slung over the armchair, a tablet charging beside the bed, curtains drawn halfway shut. She worked quickly. Mechanically.
Halfway through changing the bed sheets, she saw the folder on the nightstand.
Her name again. Bold. Underlined.
She didn't mean to. She never meant to. But the folder was unlatched, and inside were two documents she hadn't seen before. Surveillance logs dated within the last seventy-two hours. One from the attic. One from the sub-level.
A camera? Hidden?
She flipped the page.
Photos again. Not of her—but of the safe. The scratch in the plaster. A blurry image of her silhouette in the hallway.
The last page was blank. Just a line typed near the top:
"She suspects. Contingency plan required."
Footsteps echoed outside.
She slid everything back into place and returned to the linens just before Declan opened the door behind her.
"I thought I'd find you here," he said casually, like greeting a friend he hadn't seen in years. "They said you were good with corners."
Heira kept her head down. "I was just finishing up."
He walked around the bed and stopped beside her. Too close.
"You've been quiet," he said. "Not like before."
He left the remaining words unsaid —Not like before you went to prison.
"I don't talk much anymore," she said, voice flat.
"That's a shame." He gave her a look that lingered. "There was a time you had plenty to say."
Heira picked up the laundry bag. "I'll leave now."
Declan didn't move for a beat.
Then, finally: "Some people think silence is protection. It's not. It's a delay."
She walked out without answering, she didn't have the patience or time to play games with the same man who was causing eyes to be on her.
—
That night, she sat on her cot, staring at the ceiling.
There was no more pretending. Not about what the estate was, or what it had become. Not about Declan. Not about the surveillance. Not about the warning in the attic. Everything she thought she'd survived had only ever been paused.
And someone wanted her to remember that.
But the part they misunderstood—what they always misunderstood—was that silence didn't mean surrender.
It meant observation.
It meant waiting.
It meant knowing where the cracks were before you pulled them apart.
The gala was tomorrow.
They would want her nowhere near it. And she would obey, outwardly. But this time, she wasn't waiting for permission.
The file was gone. The safe was sealed. Declan's hands were in too many rooms. But someone had scratched her name into plaster, it wasn't a mistake that her name was on the wall something was hidden and she was going to find out what no matter what they did.
Someone wanted her to see.
And now she had.