DAY 1.
The drive to Connecticut was a descent into a different kind of silence. In Manhattan, the silence is expensive, soundproofed glass and white noise machines. At the Koch Estate, the silence was a threat. It was the sound of a predator holding its breath.
Jax dropped me off three blocks from the service gate in a rusted sedan that smelled of old coffee and wet upholstery. My new uniform, a stiff, charcoal grey polyester tunic and trousers, chafed against my skin. My scalp felt light and exposed where my hair used to be.
"Nineteen days, Isa," Jax said, his hands tight on the steering wheel. He was wearing the tactical gear of a private contractor; he'd already secured a position on the night watch perimeter under the name Jack Vance.
"If he touches you, if he looks at you wrong, you trigger the silent alarm on your watch. I don't care about the empire. I'll level this place."
"I'm a maid, Jax. Maids are invisible. He won't even see me." I hopped out, the heavy work boots thudding onto the pavement. I didn't look back.
The Koch Estate was a sprawling monument to Brutalist architecture, all sharp concrete angles and glass that looked like it could cut you. It was tucked into a valley of manicured pines, hidden from the world by a high tech fence that hummed with a low voltage warning.
By 6:00 AM, I was standing in a line with twelve other women in a sterile, white tiled hallway. A woman with a clipboard and a face like a sharpened axe, Mrs. Gable, the head housekeeper, walked down the line. She didn't look into our eyes. She looked at our fingernails, our shoes, and the straightness of our collars.
"In this house, we do not exist," Gable snapped, her voice echoing. "Mr. Koch values efficiency. If you are in a room when he enters, you leave. If you cannot leave, you face the wall. You do not speak. You do not offer greetings. You are the grease in the machine. If the machine squeaks, the grease is replaced."
She stopped in front of me. "New girl. Foster kid?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, pitching my voice lower, stripping away the refined Walton lilt. "Isa."
"You're on the West Wing. The library and the private study. It's the most sensitive area. If a single book is out of alignment by a millimeter, you're out. Move."
The West Wing was a cathedral of cold logic. Thousands of books, all bound in black or white leather, lined the walls. No colors. No chaos. Just a massive desk of polished steel and a view of the gray Atlantic. I spent four hours dusting spines. My back ached, a sharp, stabbing reminder that I had never done a day of manual labor in my life. Every time I felt like dropping the cloth and calling a car, I thought of Lucian's smug face. Tick tock, cousin.
At 10:15 AM, the heavy oak doors slid open. My heart hammered against my ribs. I did what I was told; I moved to the furthest corner, clutching my duster, and turned my face toward the shadow of a bookshelf.
Sterling Koch didn't walk; he moved with a rhythmic, calculated gait. I could hear the rhythmic click clack of his Italian leather shoes on the marble. He was speaking into a wireless earpiece.
"The merger with the Son group is stagnant," Sterling's voice was like dry ice, sharp and freezing. "Their 'Legitimate Heir' is a liability. He spends more on litigation for his scandals than he does on R&D. If the Walton girl picks him, the market will dip. I need the Walton girl to pick a stabilizer. I need her to pick me."
I held my breath, my nose inches from a biography of Marcus Aurelius. He was talking about me as if I were a volatile stock option.
"I don't care about her 'faceless' mystique," Sterling continued, his footsteps stopping right behind me. I could smell him, sandalwood, ozone, and something clinical, like a hospital. "She is a biological vessel for controlling interest. Once the ink is dry, she'll be moved to the estate in the Hamptons. She won't be part of the operational structure."
My grip tightened on the duster. Biological vessel. You cold, arrogant bastard.
"There's dust on the third shelf," Sterling said suddenly. He wasn't talking into his earpiece anymore. He was talking to me. But he wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the shelf, his eyes narrowed at a speck of gray I had missed.
"I'm sorry, sir," I whispered, keeping my head down.
"Don't apologize. Apologies are a waste of verbal data. Just rectify the error."
He stepped closer to reach for a file, and for a split second, our personal space vanished. I saw his hand, pale, steady, and strangely beautiful in its coldness.
He reached past my shoulder, and I felt the heat of his body, a startling contrast to his icy tone. He paused. His hand hovered near the shelf, and for a heartbeat, the room went still. I wondered if he could hear my heart? If he could smell the expensive Walton perfume I'd spent an hour scrubbing off my skin this morning?
Then, he pulled a folder and walked away without a second glance. To him, I was no different than the steel desk or the gray carpet. I was a tool that had malfunctioned.
The rest of the day was a blur of exhaustion. By 8:00 PM, the staff was dismissed to the servant's quarters, a dormitory style building at the edge of the woods. I sat on my narrow cot, my hands shaking. I had nineteen days of this.
I was about to pull out my burner phone to text Jax when I heard a sound. It was coming from the main house, a faint, frantic melody. Piano music. It wasn't the rigid, classical music I expected from a man like Sterling. It was something raw, jagged, and full of a desperate kind of longing. It sounded like someone screaming through their fingers.
I shouldn't have moved. Gable would fire me on the spot. But the music pulled me like a hook in my chest. I slipped out of the dormitory and crept through the shadows of the garden, following the sound to the glass walled solarium at the back of the mansion.
There, under the pale moonlight, was Sterling Koch. He wasn't the Prince of Metrics anymore. His jacket was off, his tie was undone, and his hair, that perfect, Ivy League hair, was disheveled. He was playing a grand piano with a violence that shocked me. His eyes were closed, his face twisted in what looked like agony.
He hit a discordant note and stopped, his hands trembling on the keys. He slumped forward, his forehead resting on the wood.
"It's not perfect," he hissed into the empty room.
"It's never perfect enough for him."
I stepped back, my boot snapping a dry twig. Sterling's head snapped up. In an instant, the mask was back on. The clinical, cold predator returned, but his eyes were bloodshot. He stared out into the darkness, exactly where I was hiding.
"Who's there?" he demanded, his voice a low snarl.
I froze, my heart leaping into my throat. If he caught a maid spying on his private breakdown, I was finished. But as he stepped toward the glass, a flashlight beam cut through the trees from the woods behind me.
"Hey! You there! The perimeter is closed to staff after 8:00 PM!"
It was Jax's voice, rough and authoritative, playing the part of the overzealous night guard. He didn't call my name. He didn't acknowledge me as a person. He shined the light directly into the solarium, blinding Sterling for a split second.
"Report to your quarters, now!" Jax barked, his silhouette looming large and anonymous.
Sterling paused, seeing the guard's uniform. He sneered, a look of pure disgust for the "help" crossing his face. He turned away, closing the heavy velvet curtains and plunging the solarium into darkness.
I scrambled back toward the dorms, Jax meeting me halfway in the shadows.
"You're playing with fire," Jax whispered, grabbing my arm. "He's more unstable than the dossier said."
"He's not a machine, Jax," I breathed, looking back at the dark mansion. "He's a prisoner. And I think he hates himself even more than he hates the world."
I went to bed that night with the sound of those jagged notes in my head.