Eyes in the Shadow

Chapter Two: The Late-Night Study

Five minutes to ten. Ella carried the tray up to the second floor.

The corridor was darker than the third. Only two wall sconces were lit; the rest were hollow black sockets, like gouged-out eyes. The carpet was deep red, impossibly soft underfoot—she would later learn it was a handmade Persian rug, each square meter worth two years of her wages.

The study door was twice the size of the others—carved black ebony, its handle a brass dragon head with a door knocker clasped in its jaws. She took a deep breath and pushed with her free hand.

The door wasn't locked. It swung open silently, like the entrance to a tomb.

The study was larger than she had imagined. Three walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with leather-bound volumes—not decorations, she noticed, for the spines showed wear and some held bookmarks. Before the French window stood a massive rosewood desk, its surface strewn with documents, a cigar box, and a disassembled gun.

That gun made Ella pause. A Glock 17, broken into three parts, beside it a small bottle of gun oil and a piece of flannel.

Chan sat in the chair behind the desk. This time his back was not to her. He was reading a document, the desk lamp cutting his face into two halves—warm copper on the left, inky shadow on the right. He had changed into a different shirt, dark gray, sleeves rolled to his forearms, revealing a tattoo on the inside of his arm: a string of Thai script. She would later learn it meant blood for blood.

"On the desk." He didn't look up.

Ella set the tray beside the pile of documents. On it were a whiskey glass, a bottle of Macallan 18, and a small jar of ice spheres. She turned to leave.

"Pour."

She froze. The rules said don't speak to the master, but they didn't say anything about pouring. She hesitated, then picked up the bottle and pulled the cork. Amber liquid flowed into the crystal glass, the ice crackling softly.

"To the brim," he added.

Ella poured to the rim. As she set the bottle down, her fingers brushed the disassembled gun at the corner of the desk—the metal cold, the barrel engraved with small characters she couldn't make out.

"Do you know how to use it?" he asked suddenly.

"What?"

"The gun." He finally looked up, his amber eyes turning nearly translucent in the lamplight. "Do you?"

Ella shook her head. "No."

"Good." He picked up the glass and downed half of it in one gulp, whiskey rolling down his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing. "People who know how to use a gun either kill or get killed. You don't, so you're safe."

The words chilled her spine. She wanted to ask what do you mean by safe? but common sense sealed her lips.

"You can go." He turned back to his document, as if she were nothing but a piece of furniture, a robot that poured drinks.

Ella turned toward the door. Just as her fingers touched the handle, his voice came again from behind her:

"Which room are you in?"

"The maid's room. Third-floor corner, next to the stairs."

"Which way does the window face?"

She blinked. "North... facing the back hill."

A few seconds of silence. Then he said: "Move to the middle room tonight. The one facing the front courtyard."

"Why?"

The word was out before she could stop it. The rules had no room for why. The rules only had yes and okay.

But Chan didn't get angry. He just turned a page, the rustle of paper unnaturally loud in the silence. "Because the alley your window faces will have people passing through tonight. You shouldn't see them, and they shouldn't see you."

Ella's grip tightened on the door handle. She wanted to ask what people? but her lips felt sewn shut. She only nodded, hurried out of the study, and closed the door gently behind her.

In the corridor, she leaned against the wall and gasped for air. Her heart was pounding like it might explode. She didn't understand why changing rooms made her so uneasy—but it was the way he spoke, that certain, unquestionable tone, as calm as a weather forecast, that made her feel like she had walked into a maze without visible boundaries.

She went back to the third floor and knocked on the housekeeper's door. When the housekeeper heard what Chan had said, her face changed—not fear, but something more complicated, like a mixture of dread and resignation.

"Do as he says." The housekeeper tossed her a key. "The middle room. It used to be... never mind. Don't say I didn't warn you. That room isn't clean."

"What do you mean, not clean? Rats?"

The housekeeper looked at her as if she were a naive child. "Worse than rats."

Ella dragged her luggage—a tattered canvas bag containing two T-shirts, one pair of trousers, and a battered copy of Jane Eyre—into the new room. It was larger than she expected, with a double bed, a wardrobe, and a French window. The curtains were heavy velvet, wine-red, thick with dust.

She pulled the curtains open. Moonlight flooded in.

The front courtyard lay bare under the moon: trimmed lawns, a dry fountain, the cast-iron gate. And beyond the gate, a black sedan, its lights off, parked silently at the curb.

The windows were tinted. She couldn't see inside. But instinct told her someone in that car was looking at her.

She yanked the curtains shut, stepped back three paces, and her back hit the wardrobe. The wardrobe door rattled open a crack. It was empty inside—but something hung from the rail: a pearl necklace, each bead the size of a fingertip, gleaming with a cold, pale light under the moon.

Engraved on the clasp was a line of text: C.B. to V.B., Always.

Ella didn't know who V.B. was. But she knew C.B. was Chan Black. She closed the wardrobe, crawled into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and stared at the ceiling.

Two in the morning. She was jolted awake by a sound. Not a scream, not a gunshot, but something more muffled—low, sustained, like the whimper of a dying animal. From the corridor, or from inside the walls, she couldn't tell.

She remembered the housekeeper's fourth rule: cover your ears, lock the door, wait until dawn.

But she didn't move. She lay in bed, eyes wide open, listening as the sound gradually weakened, became breathing, became silence. Then she heard footsteps—heavy, dragging—passing by her door, pausing for three seconds, then moving on, disappearing into the end of the third-floor corridor.

The next morning, she found several drops of dark red stains on the corridor carpet. Not blood—she told herself. Red wine. Whiskey. Any red liquid.

But she knew what it was.

Because the smell—sweet and metallic, like rust—clung stubbornly to her nostrils even after she had cleaned the entire corridor, and it wouldn't wash away.