CHAPTER TWENTY
1300 Words
The Lord Dutch household had never felt so still. It was the silence of a storm holding its breathheavy, unnatural, pressing against the skin like a warning. Lamps flickered along the marble walls, but their light did not warm. It only sharpened the shadows gathering in every corner.
Then Laura entered.
The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the world stopped. Maids with scrubbing brushes in hand froze mid-motion. Whispers died on lips. Heads turned as one, and dozens of eyes fixed on her. They did not see a guest. They did not see a girl who had walked these halls before. They saw a criminal. Suspicion curdled in their stares, sharp and certain, as if her guilt had been written across her face long before she arrived.
Laura stopped walking. Her breath caught.
"What did I wrong?,why are they staring at me?" The question pounded in her chest, but no answer came. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, a voice cut through the silence like a blade.
“Lord Dutch wants you. Now.”
One maid stepped forward, her face blank, her grip already closing around Laura’s arm. There was no room for protest, no time for questions. The word “now” was not a request. It was a sentence.
And so she was pulled away, down corridors that seemed to stretch longer with every step, toward a door that had never felt so much like a prison gate.
The doors to Lord Dutch’s chamber slammed open with a sound that echoed in Laura’s bones.
He stood at the center of the room, tall and unmoving, a statue carved from wrath. But it was not his face alone that struck her it was his eyes. Cold. Empty. Wrong. The eyes she remembered, the stern but fair gaze of a father and lord, was gone. In its place was something alien, something that looked through her rather than at her.
Two maids seized her arms before she could bow, before she could speak.
“You,” he said, and the word fell like a gavel.
“My Lord?” Laura managed, her voice trembling. “Please, I don’t—”
“Silence.”
The command silenced the room. His lips barely moved, but the air seemed to bend to his will.
“You kidnapped Madam Evelyn,” he said.
The accusation hit her harder than any blow.
“What?!” Laura wrenched against the hands holding her. “No! I would never, I swear it, I don’t even know where she is , I've been searching all over for her"
“Confess,” he said, leaning forward, and his smile was not his own. It was a predator’s smile, hollow and cruel. “Or I will have you killed where you stand.”
For a moment, the world tilted. Laura stared at him—at the man who had sat at the head of this house for decades, but she felt like he was acting strange.
“I am your Lord,” he replied softly, and the softness made it worse. “And I say you are guilty.”
The doors burst open again.
Alexander. Nathan. Raymond.
Three brothers, breath ragged, faces twisted between fury and terror as they threw themselves between their father and the girl they knew was innocent.
“Father, stop!” Alexander’s voice echoed as he slams the door.
“She didn’t do it!” Nathan shouted. “She couldn’t have, she was with Alexander!”
Alexander stepped forward, his chest heaving, eyes locked on his father’s unnatural gaze.
“When Madam Evelyn was taken, Laura was sick,” he said, she couldn't be the one.“She was at my court burning with fever, barely able to stand. I was there. She didn’t leave that room. She didn’t even have the strength to walk to the door, let alone ride out and kidnap anyone!”
Nathan nodded fiercely, stepping beside his brother.
“She was under my watch the entire time. If you want to accuse someone, accuse me too,because we never left I never her side even though Alexander kept her.”
For the first time, Lord Dutch’s gaze flickered toward his sons. But there was no recognition in it. No father’s pride. Only cold calculation.
“You lie to protect her,” he said flatly.
“No!” Laura cried, tears spilling now. “I was sick, my Lord! I couldn’t have done this! ask the servants,ask anyone!”
But he had already decided. Reason had no place in the man standing before her.
“Take her to the dungeons,” he said quietly.
“Father!” Nathan lunged forward, but it was too late.
Lord Dutch’s fist moved faster than thought. It struck Alexander square in the face.
The crack of bone against flesh echoed through the chamber. Alexander staggered back, blood spilling from his lip, his hand flying to his face. But it was not the pain that broke him. It was the look in his father’s eyes,or the absence of one.
“Father!” Raymond’s shout tore from his throat, raw and broken.
“No…” Nathan whispered, as if saying it could undo what had just happened.
Laura gasped, her knees nearly buckling.
“Take her to the dungeons,” Lord dutch roared.. before he could finish.
Footsteps echoed as it tore through the marble floor.heavy
The Lord dutch door swung open with a screech.
Lord Dutch stood there. Or rather, the thing wearing his face stood there. His eyes were wrong—glassy, distant, as if someone else was looking out through them.
“You will confess,” he said, voice flat, hollow.
Laura lifted her chin. “I have nothing to confess.”
A smile curled his lips, but it did not reach his eyes. “Everyone confesses, eventually.”
From the shadows behind him, another figure stepped forward. Tall, cloaked in black, with a voice like silk dragged over glass.
Tuna.
“You see,” Tuna said softly, “Lord Dutch is a reasonable man. He would never strike his own son. He would never condemn an innocent girl.”
He paused, letting the words sink in.
“Unless… he was shown reasons he could not refuse.”
Laura’s breath caught.
The mask slipped for a moment. Lord Dutch’s jaw clenched. A flicker of pain crossed his eyes—real pain, buried deep under the spell. But it was gone as quickly as it came.
“She will suffer " tuna said.
Laura understood then. This was not about Madam Evelyn. It was not about justice. It was about control. the lords had found Lord Dutch’s weakness—his favorite maid and was using it to twist him into a weapon.
“You’re a monster,” Laura whispered.
lords wife smiled." take her to the dungeon.”
He straightened, turning to the puppet he had made of Lord Dutch.
“Take her to the lower cells. Let her think on what happens to those who cross me.”
Lord Dutch did not hesitate. He stepped forward, reaching for the cell door with hands .
Behind him, Tuna watched, satisfied. The strings pulled taut.
The cell door slammed shut.
Alexander knelt on the cold marble now, one hand pressed to his bleeding mouth, the other trembling at his side. And he was staring at his father.
not with anger, but with a betrayal so deep it hollowed him out.
The Dutch household, once unbreakable, had cracked.
A father’s fist against his son.
An innocent girl condemned, even with an alibi spoken aloud.
And a darkness, smiling in a familiar face, tightening its grip on them all.
And in the darkness, Laura whispered a name that had not been spoken.
“ Madame Evelyn…”
- Writer
