The room assigned to her was located at the far end of the East Wing, an area of the manor where the heating seemed to struggle against a thermal inertia rising from the floor. It was a vast space, with an imposing ceiling height that only served to accentuate the sense of solitude. Here, luxury was not meant to welcome, but to impress. The furniture was of a sober, almost clinical elegance: a king-size bed with charcoal-gray linen sheets, a glass desk with sharp angles that looked as if it had never held a single sheet of paper, and a leather armchair whose scent of newness—acrid and animalistic—still lingered in the air.
Faye placed her bag on the bedspread, which was pulled so taut she felt as if she were committing an act of vandalism. She did not unpack her suitcases. It was an old survival reflex inherited from years of traveling: never fully settle in before identifying all the emergency exits. In a home like this, permanent installation was an illusion; she preferred to keep the idea of a possible departure within reach, just in case the air became unbreathable.
She approached the window. The glass, triple-paned and likely bulletproof, isolated her so effectively from the outside world that the landscape felt like a cinematic projection. The view overlooked a part of the garden hidden from the main entrance. A labyrinth of thuja hedges, trimmed with millimetric precision, stretched to the edge of the pine forest. Out there, the trees seemed to huddle together, forming a dark organic wall, as if to prevent the darkness from spilling onto the estate's impeccably mown lawn.
On the glass desk, a digital tablet sat perfectly centered. She turned it on. The screen, with surgical resolution, displayed a schedule for the next forty-eight hours. Everything was recorded with statistical coldness: Aleksei's exact feeding times, sleep cycles calculated to the nearest gram, and wakeful moments dedicated to motor development. However, what struck Faye was not the precision of the timing, but the total absence of flexibility. The document accounted for neither the tears, the need for arms, nor the sudden curiosities of a nine-month-old child. To the manor's management, it seemed Aleksei was a data point to be optimized, a project to be completed, rather than simply a baby.
— The Weight of Silence —
Faye left her room to return to the nursery. The walk was a lesson in architectural humility. Her footsteps, though firm, were completely muffled by the thick hallway carpet, producing no sound at all. It was one of the most disturbing characteristics of this house: silence was not a mere absence of noise, but an suffocating presence, an entity in its own right that seemed to weigh on her shoulders. It was as if the walls, covered with hidden acoustic panels, absorbed the vibrations of life before they could even propagate.
Pushing open the heavy oak door of the child's room, she felt immediate relief, as if she had just surfaced after a long breath-hold. Here, the air felt lighter, less laden with that artificial gravity.
Aleksei was awake and seemed full of energy. She picked him up and placed him on the play mat. Sitting amidst his Scandinavian wooden toys, he immediately went to work, trying with touching concentration to stack two wooden blocks. His small fingers slipped, the blocks fell with a dull thud, and he let out a small grunt of frustration, his brow furrowing exactly like his father's.
Faye sat on the floor at a respectful distance, legs crossed. She didn't want to interrupt his effort by intervening too quickly. She watched him for a long time. Aleksei was nothing like an extension of the Volkov architecture.
He had round cheeks that flushed with effort, deep black eyes that sparkled with vivid curiosity, and that one rebellious lock of hair that refused to stay in place despite the grooming he surely received. He was the only unpredictable element, the only organic grain of sand in this mausoleum of glass and concrete.
"You're going to get it, come on," she whispered softly.
The child looked up at her, surprised by the sound of her voice, which did not carry Gabriel's dry authority. A moment of hesitation, and then he offered her a toothless smile. It was a gesture of such disarming purity that it seemed to crack the ambient coldness of the room. Faye felt a pang in her heart.
This child was growing up in a palace where every material need was met before it was even expressed, yet he seemed desperately alone in his discovery of the world.
She spent the afternoon by his side, deliberately deciding to deviate from the script. She did not follow the repetitive cognitive exercise suggestions written on the tablet. Instead, she lay on the mat and read stories aloud to him, letting the music of the words and the inflections of her voice fill the space.
She noticed he reacted to the changes in intonation, that he tried to grab the book's images with his chubby hands, his eyes widening with every new page. He was a normal child, hungry for interaction and warmth, trapped in a system that only understood logistics and performance.
— The Requirement —
Around 8:00 PM, as the fading azure light gave way to evening shadows, the nursery door opened with mechanical fluidity, without even the squeak of a hinge. Faye stood up instantly, smoothing her shirt by professional reflex. It was not Gabriel Stein and his leather folder.
Nikolai Volkov entered.
The man seemed to drain all the light in the room toward him, like a black hole in a business suit. He had removed his jacket, revealing a black shirt with sleeves slightly rolled up over powerful forearms.
His physical presence was overwhelming—a force of nature contained within the limits of an aristocratic upbringing. He did not greet Faye; he clearly felt no need to. His first look was for the crib, then for the child who was now crawling toward a small wooden train on the mat.
He stood there, motionless, hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, his gaze fixed.
His face was a marble mask sculpted from fatigue and high expectations. Faye, though used to difficult employers, thought she detected an imperceptible tension in his jaw, as if he were forcing himself to maintain a safety distance between himself and his son.
"Did he have his meal?" he finally asked. His voice was deep, a monotone bass that seemed to resonate through the floor.
"Yes, sir. He has a very healthy appetite," Faye replied, standing to face him.
Nikolai slowly turned his head toward her. His gray eyes, the color of tempered steel, seemed to probe her thoughts, looking for a flaw or a lie. Faye held his gaze without blinking. She had learned that when facing predators of this caliber, lowering one's eyes was equivalent to admitting defeat.
"Gabriel told me you were used to complex environments," he continued. "I expect you to maintain order here. Aleksei needs stability, not improvisation. The program on the tablet is the result of expert consultations. Do not deviate from it."
"With all due respect, sir, stability for a child isn't just a schedule. He needs contact, spontaneous play. He reacts very well to external stimuli when allowed to explore at his own pace."
Volkov's gaze hardened. It wasn't an explosive anger, but a cold disapproval, a final refusal.
"You are here to ensure his physical well-being and development according to the directives we have established. Do not confuse your role with that of a sentimental educator, Miller. Emotions are variables we try to stabilize, not encourage."
He took a step toward the child, but his hands remained in his pockets. He did not lean down to pick him up, nor did he seek contact. He simply watched him, as one observes a precious piece of jewelry while fearing to break the mechanism. Aleksei, instinctively sensing his father's overwhelming presence, stopped playing.
He raised a small hand toward him, but Nikolai did not move. The silence between the two was heavy, saturated with questions the child could not yet ask.
"Are your quarters suitable?" Nikolai asked suddenly, abruptly breaking eye contact with his son.
"The room is very comfortable, sir," she answered soberly.
"Good. You have everything you need. If you have specific needs for the child, go through Gabriel. I do not wish to be disturbed for minor logistical matters. Keep the nursery door closed in the evenings. I do not like the sounds of the house disrupting his sleep."
He did not wait for an answer. He turned on his heel with military precision and left the room. His footsteps echoed briefly on the hardwood before being swallowed again by the hallway carpet, leaving behind a room that felt strangely empty.
— The Night —
Faye stood motionless for a long time after his departure, her breath short, as if oxygen had only just returned to the nursery after Volkov left. The tension did not leave the room for several minutes.
She approached the window and drew the thick velvet curtains to shut out the outside world, but not before taking one last look at the estate plunged into twilight.
Outside, the floodlights had come on, sweeping across the lawn at regular intervals like luminous sentinels. The forest, now completely black, seemed to have moved forward, its shadows stretching toward the manor like dark fingers searching for a flaw in the concrete.
She didn't know what Volkov was protecting with such fervor—his son, his fortune, or secrets too heavy to be shared—but she felt that the danger was not only lurking behind the pines. It was here, in the silence of the hallways and the coldness of the orders.
She attended to Aleksei for the final change of the day. The baby, tired from his afternoon efforts, let her proceed while babbling softly, his eyes fighting against sleep. When she placed him in his crib, he grabbed Faye's index finger and squeezed it with all his strength, a small human anchor in this ocean of emptiness. He didn't let go until sleep finally claimed him.
Faye sat in the rocking chair, alone under the dimmed nightlight. She realized she wasn't afraid of Nikolai's coldness, or even the oppressive silence of the manor.
What frightened her was the immense solitude emanating from this child and the darkness that seemed to inhabit every corner of this house, like an invisible mold. She understood then that her true mission would not be to follow an expert program, but to protect the tiny spark of life burning in Aleksei's eyes, before the Volkov manor and its master eventually extinguished it altogether.
She finally retreated to her own room, but sleep was long in coming. The wind had picked up on the coast, and the groaning of the pines against the reinforced glass echoed like a warning she was not yet ready to decipher.