Chapter 2 - The Mansion in the Shadows
By eight o'clock in the evening, Julian Bennett was settled into his oversized mahogany bed in the east wing of the estate. The room was vast, filled with tall floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the black, rain-swept grounds of the estate. A single reading lamp cast long, amber shadows across the dark hardwood floors.
I stood by the doorway, holding a silver tray with his evening medications.
"Set it on the table," he instructed, his eyes fixed on a thick leather-bound document resting on a mechanical reading stand in front of him. "And sit down."
I placed the tray on the nightstand and stepped back toward the perimeter of the room. "I am required to monitor you for thirty minutes after you take the blood thinners, Mr. Bennett. I can stand."
"Sit, Clara," he repeated, his voice leaving no room for argument. He gestured with a slight turn of his chin toward a low velvet armchair beside the fireplace. "You look like you are about to collapse. I have no desire to call an ambulance for my own nurse."
I sat on the edge of the chair, my knees pressed tightly together. The house was unnaturally quiet. Outside, the storm was picking up, wind howling through the ancient oaks surrounding the property, rattling the heavy glass panes.
"The housekeeper said you live alone," I said, breaking the silence before the memory of David could swallow me whole.
"I do," Julian replied without looking up from his papers. "My staff leaves at seven. I prefer privacy."
"Is that safe? In your condition?"
A dry, bitter laugh escaped his lips. "My condition, Miss Clara, is permanent. A spinal lesion at the thoracic level. I have no feeling below my sternum. If the house catches fire, I burn. If an intruder enters, I am shot. Having a dozen servants hovering over me like vultures waiting for a carcass does not change those facts."
He turned his head slowly, his grey eyes pinning me to the chair.
"Tell me about your son," he said suddenly.
I blinked, caught off guard. "Brandon?"
"The eight-year-old with the fever," he said smoothly. "Did you buy his medicine?"
"I used the fifty-dollar advance the housekeeper gave me before I came upstairs," I admitted, my voice dropping. "I had it delivered to my neighbor's apartment. She texted me twenty minutes ago. His fever is down."
Julian stared at me for a long moment. "And your daughter?"
"Emma," I whispered, a faint smile touching my lips despite the crushing tension in the room. "She's five. She thinks we're playing a camping game because the radiators aren't working."
Julian looked down at his own lifeless hands resting on the silk duvet. "A camping game," he repeated softly. "Children have a remarkable capacity for surviving the horror their parents construct for them."
There was a strange, heavy grief in his voice—a tone that didn't belong to a ruthless billionaire who fired staff on a whim.
"Mr. Bennett," I asked, the question slipping out of my mouth before my caution could stop it. "How long have you been in the chair?"
The room seemed to drop five degrees. Julian’s face hardened, the brief flash of humanity disappearing behind a wall of impenetrable ice.
"Ten years," he said flatly. "An automobile accident on the North Coast Highway. My car went off the embankment during a storm."
My throat went bone dry. Ten years ago. That was 2016. Ten years after David vanished.
"Was anyone else in the car?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Julian’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "You ask a great deal of personal questions for a woman who was hired four hours ago to empty washbasins."
"I am sorry, sir," I said quickly, rising from the chair and taking a step back. "I didn't mean to pry."
"The medication, Clara," he commanded coldly, pointing at the tray.
I picked up the small paper cup containing his pills and handed it to him. As he took it, his fingers brushed against mine. His skin was burning hot, but his hand was steady. As he leaned back to swallow the pills with a glass of water, the silver chain around his neck shifted, the ring slipping out from beneath his collar once more.
In the dim amber light of the lamp, I saw something I hadn't noticed in the bathroom.
Engraved on the interior curve of the silver ring, barely visible against the tarnished metal, were two small initials:
D.V.
David Vance. My brother’s full name.
May you like
My hands began to shake again. I backed out of the room quietly, leaving Julian Bennett alone with his books and his shadows. But as I closed the heavy oak door behind me, I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
Julian Bennett didn't just know what happened to my brother twenty years ago. He was wearing his memory around his neck.
