Chapter3
1073 Words
She didn’t know if that was meant to make her feel better or worse. He leaned slightly against the shelf, arms now crossed. The firelight caught the edge of his profile sharp nose, high cheekbones, and the faintest scar near his brow. It wasn’t his looks that made him intimidating. It was the way he held himself. Like a man always prepared for a blow he wouldn’t dodge.
She found herself watching him too long.
“You’re staring.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You did.”
His words weren’t cruel. Just honest. Disarming in their simplicity.
“I just…” She took a breath. “You look different from your portrait.”
He raised a brow. “Which one?”
“The one at the stairwell. You look… younger in it.”
“That portrait was painted five years ago,” he said, voice softer now. “I’ve lived a lifetime since.”
There it was. A c***k. Just the smallest one. But it was enough to let something through.
Amira shifted her weight, suddenly unsure what to do with her arms. She wished he’d go back to the hallway. She wished he’d stay exactly where he was.
“People talk,” she murmured.
“They always do.”
“They say this house is cursed.”
He tilted his head, just slightly. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I haven’t been here long enough.”
“But long enough to ask.”
Amira’s eyes flicked to the floor, then back to him. “Why don’t you leave?”
His expression didn’t change. “Because some of us don’t get to run.”
The way he said it made her chest tighten.
Grayson pushed away from the shelf. The conversation was over. He walked past her, slow and quiet, like fog slipping through the cracks in a window. But just as he reached the door, he paused.
“You should be careful,” he said without turning. “This house remembers things. Even if you try to forget them.”
Then he was gone.
The door clicked shut behind him.
And Amira stood there, alone in a room that no longer felt quiet. Her fingers brushed the edge of the mantle, but the familiar warmth had vanished. The silence stretched, thick and uneasy, pressing against her chest. Dust hung in the slivers of sunlight like the ghosts of moments that no longer belonged to her. She didn’t move just stood there, rooted to the floorboards that once creaked with laughter and quiet footsteps. Now, every corner felt like it was waiting for someone who wouldn’t return.
One hand still resting on the spine of Dorian Gray, like she needed to anchor herself to something real.
She had met men like Grayson Ashcroft before, cold ones, powerful ones, men who filled a room without raising their voice. But not like this. Not this particular quiet. Not this kind of tension that didn’t yell, didn’t growl just watchedyou, like it was daring you to flinch.
“Some of us don’t get to run.”
The words settled heavy in her chest, like ash. There had been something raw in the way he said it. Something he hadn’t meant for her to hear, maybe. Or maybe he had, and that was worse.
She exhaled slowly, pressing her palm flat against her chest, trying to slow the pace of her heartbeat.
Why was it still racing?
He hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t even stood too close. But still her body had reacted like it had been brushed with static. Like it had recognized something. A familiar kind of darkness, maybe. Or grief. Or loneliness. The kind of loneliness that doesn’t scream it just exists in silence, every day, like background noise in your bones.
She didn’t know what to make of him.
He hadn’t smiled. Hadn’t tried to charm her. He wasn’t interested in playing nice.
And yet… she couldn’t stop thinking about his eyes.
They were beautiful, yes, but not in the way that made her feel safe. They were distant. Stormy. The kind of eyes that had seen too much and didn’t talk about it. But every so often, there’d been a flicker like a current of something unspoken moved just beneath them.
Like he was holding in a scream and had gotten very good at making it look like silence.
She didn’t know whether to be afraid of him or for him.
And why do you care, Amira? she asked herself bitterly. You’re not here to care. You’re not here to feel. You came here to survive.
And yet here she was standing in an old library with trembling fingers and a mind already circling a man whose presence made her skin hum.
What did he see when he looked at her?
Did he know she wasn’t really “Amira Nolan”? Did he suspect anything? Or had he just seen another staff member, another passing face in a house that probably swallowed people whole?
She moved to the fireplace, lowering herself slowly into the velvet armchair that creaked beneath her. Her fingers rubbed together absentmindedly, the same way they used to when she was a kid and lying awake in unfamiliar beds.
“I see,” he’d said when she introduced herself.
Not nice to meet you. Not welcome. Just I see.
But it wasn’t empty. It felt like being weighed.
Seen.
Maybe for the first time in a long time.
She didn’t like that. She wasn’t ready to be seen.
Especially not by someone like him.
Because there was something about him she couldn’t name yet. Something dangerous, yes but not in the way people usually were. Not in a way that screamed run. He was quieter. Sadder. Like he was a locked door in a burning house, and if you opened him, you might never find your way back out.
Amira rubbed her palms against her thighs and stared into the flames.
You need to focus, she told herself. This house has rules. Secrets. There are answers here. You didn’t come for him.
But her body remembered.
The way his voice made the air still. The way his eyes had narrowed when she asked why he stayed.
And the way her own heart had whispered, Me too, before she could stop it.
- Writer
