THE HOUSE THAT WATCHES
925 Words
The Lucetti estate had always been too quiet, even when her father was alive.
It sat like a secret on the hills just beyond the Roman outskirts — ancient stone wrapped in ivy, iron gates that groaned like they resented being opened. From a distance, it looked abandoned. Forgotten. Sarafina often wished it were.
The rain followed her home. She left muddy footprints down the marble hall, stripped off her coat at the door, and stood for a moment beneath the dim chandelier, letting the silence settle over her like a second skin.
She had barely set the envelope on the hallway table when something shifted — not a sound exactly, but a sensation. Like the house had inhaled.
Someone was watching.
Her fingers moved instinctively to the dagger strapped to her thigh — the one her father insisted she wear even after he stopped saying why. She didn’t draw it. Not yet.
Instead, she turned slowly and scanned the hallway.
Empty.
Still, the feeling didn’t leave.
She made her way to the study. Her boots echoed softly against the black and white tiled floor — steps too loud for a house this dead. She paused at the threshold, hand resting on the edge of the doorframe.
The study was untouched. Too untouched.
Her father’s leather chair still held the faint imprint of his form. A half-burnt match rested in the ashtray by the window. The air smelled of old wood, paper, and sandalwood cologne — his scent. Faint now, like memory.
Sarafina sat at the desk, the wood creaking slightly beneath her. She opened the drawers. No photos. No diaries. Just files — contracts, deeds, forged passports. A collection of paper lives and masked identities. The life of a man who prepared for every end except his own.
In the far corner of the bottom drawer sat a black-bound notebook. Thin. Plain. Harmless.
She opened it.
Page after page of numbers. Coordinates. Codes. Calculated precision — her father’s mind on paper. But one word kept recurring:
“Silence.”
She traced it with her finger, as if the ink might pulse back with meaning.
Then she turned to the last page.
A name was circled three times, the ink pressed in with heavy strokes:
Dante Moretti.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. No caller ID.
She didn’t flinch.
“You shouldn’t be there alone,” Dante said.
His voice was a blend of smoke and command. Not loud, but heavy. It lingered after the words were gone.
“How do you know where I am?” she asked.
“I don’t. But I know the Lucetti house. And I know you.”
She hated the implication in that sentence. Like he understood her. Like he had the right to.
“You following me now?”
“No,” he said. “But I would, if I thought you'd live long enough to hate me for it.”
She leaned back in the chair. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning,” he said flatly. “Two of my men were found dead this morning. Throats cut. No signs of forced entry. Just silence.”
Her fingers curled around the armrest.
“And you think this is connected to my father?”
“He wasn’t the only name on the list,” Dante replied. “He may have hidden the project, but he didn’t bury it well enough. Now someone thinks you have what he was protecting.”
Sarafina stared at the notebook. Silence. The same word — again and again.
“And the others on the list?” she asked. “The ones who aren’t crossed out?”
“Marked,” Dante said simply.
She hesitated. “Am I marked?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
She hung up.
Not from fear. From fury.
She hated being hunted more than she hated being underestimated.
The notebook slipped from her fingers, falling open on the desk. She caught a glimpse of something taped to the inside of the back cover — a faded photograph, folded once, the edges crisp from age.
It was her. Young. Maybe eight or nine. Standing beside a man in a lab coat. He wasn't her father.
Written on the back in her father's handwriting:
“If anything happens to me, burn the house.”
Sarafina stared at the message, bile rising in her throat.
There were too many ghosts here. And she wasn’t sure they were all dead.
She rose from the chair, went upstairs to her old bedroom. It hadn’t changed in years — still painted in a soft off-white, the furniture antique and elegant. She undressed slowly, peeled off her wet clothes, and stepped into the shower.
The water ran hot.
She pressed her palms to the tile and let the heat pour over her like baptism — but it couldn't wash the cold truth from her skin:
She didn’t know who she was mourning more — her father, or the version of herself that once believed him untouchable.
The second she stepped out of the shower, her phone buzzed again.
This time, a message.
Unknown number:
“The silence is coming for you. Burn the list.”
Her breath caught.
There was no name. No trace. Just a digital echo of something older than bullets or blood.
Sarafina Lucetti was no stranger to danger.
But for the first time, she felt the whisper of something else beneath her skin — something colder than fear.
Silence isn’t just a code.
It was an executioner.
- Writer
