Chapter2
1079 Words
Grayson exhaled slowly and quietly, his breath
curled into the cold air and disappeared.
He hadn’t planned on being out here. He didn’t do much planning anymore. The house was planned for him. The whispers, the rules, the memories that crept up the walls when the lights flickered.
He looked up again, but the window was just glass now. Just a square of reflection holding nothing.
Still, something in him stayed fixed there.
He didn’t believe in first impressions. People were masked, mostly. Mirrors. They showed you what you wanted to see until it wasn’t useful anymore. But the girl in the window there was something about the way she looked down, not with fear or awe, but with measured caution. Like she was trying to figure out if the house was lying to her, too.
He wondered if she’d heard the stories yet. If she’d asked why the West Wing was locked, why the help never stayed longer than a season, or why strangers still stopped at the gates to take pictures of a place they called cursed.
He wondered if she knew what she was walking into.
He turned and walked slowly through the garden, gravel crunching softly underfoot, past the broken stone angel missing its face, past the crumbling bench where Annalise used to read her letters aloud, his late fiancée. The one they said he killed.
The one he couldn’t remember losing.
The one whose ghost still lived here louder than he did.
Grayson paused at the base of the estate, one hand resting against the cold stone. He tilted his head slightly, catching the faint sound of footsteps above.
She was moving again.
He didn’t know her name. Didn’t want to, not yet. Names had a way of folding people into neat boxes. And there was nothing neat about her. Not the way she stood still like silence was a second skin. Not the way her eyes searched the grounds like they recognized the danger before the invitation.
No. She didn’t belong here.
But she had the look of someone who knew how to survive a place that didn’t want her.
And for that alone, he couldn’t look away.
The wind picked up, tossing rain across his collar, but he didn’t flinch. Inside, someone called his name distant and annoyed, likely his mother but Grayson stayed a moment longer.
Just in case the girl in the window was still watching.
Just in case she came back.
Because even if she didn’t know it yet, this house would try to eat her alive.
And something in him, the part that still felt things, however rarely wanted to see if she could survive it.
Or burn it down first.
Grayson then walks in
It wasn’t the door opening that caught her.
It was the way the air shifted. Like something ancient had just stepped into the room.
Amira stood in the library with a duster in one hand, pretending to focus on the towering bookshelf in front of her. The scent of old paper and lemon oil clung to the walls. A fire crackled low in the hearth. She’d been alone for half an hour, thankful for the quiet, until she wasn’t.
She didn’t hear footsteps. No creak. No cough. Just stillness folding in on itself then breath. A breath that wasn’t hers.
She turned.
He was already there.
Grayson Ashcroft.
He stood just inside the doorway, a few steps into the room, dressed in a black turtleneck and tailored slacks that made him look like he’d stepped out of a noir film timeless, sharp, slightly undone.
He wasn’t looking at her. Not yet. His gaze traveled across the room like he was cataloging every piece of it, its quiet, its shadows, its flaws.
And then he looked at her.
Not a glance. Not a polite flicker.
He looked at her.
Eyes the color of storm-washed glass, pale and unreadable, locked onto her like she’d interrupted something without meaning to.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t frown. But the silence around him felt tight stretched thin between them, humming like a live wire.
Amira forgot what her hands were doing. The duster hung limp at her side. Her mouth opened slightly, but no sound came.
There was nothing loud about him. No arrogance. No smirk. He didn’t need those things. The room bent around him without permission. Not because he demanded it, but because he carried something darker than anger "history".
He moved toward the shelf opposite her, silent as smoke, and pulled a book from the second row. One hand in his pocket, the other skimming the cover without really seeing it.
“Has my mother assigned you to reorganize the fiction section?” His voice was low. Not rough, not smooth just measured. Like every word had to pass through a filter before it earned its place.
Amira cleared her throat. “No. I was… just dusting.”
A pause.
Then, “You dusted the same book twice.”
Her eyes dropped. She had. Her fingers were still pressed to the spine of the same cracked volume The Picture of Dorian Gray. How fitting.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said quietly.
“You didn’t.” Another pause. “You just surprised me.”
Surprised him? That didn’t feel right. He didn’t seem like someone who got surprised. He seemed like someone who calculated everything before stepping into a room.
He put the book back without reading a single page. His movements were careful, practiced. The kind of grace people mistake for calm. But Amira knew better. There was tension in his shoulders like something lived beneath his skin that he kept caged there.
His gaze landed on her again. “You’re the new assistant.”
She nodded. “Amira.”
A twitch, almost imperceptible, flicked through his jaw.
No recognition. Something else.
“I see.”
That was all. I see. No handshake. No welcome. No questions.
Just... I see.
And yet, the way he said it like he’d already gathered everything he needed from the way she stood, the way her voice caught in her throat, the way she clutched the duster like it might protect her made her feel exposed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, brushing at her blouse instinctively. “I should’ve knocked if I knew”
“It’s my house,” he cut in, almost distractedly. “I don’t knock either.”
- Writer
