TRAPPED IN THE BILLIONAIRE'S HAUNTED MANSION

The man was bleeding. Not blood. Energy. I saw it the second he stopped in front of my small table at Victoria Street Market in Durban. Black smoke pouring from his chest, right where his heart should be. The kind of smoke that only comes when someone hasn't slept in months and is being eaten alive by a ghost they love. He didn't look like my usual customers. My usual customers were aunties asking if their boyfriend is cheating. Students asking if they will pass matric. Girls asking if that boy likes them. This man wore a black suit that cost more than my mother's house in Umlazi. A watch that shone like a small sun. And he had a face that made my thighs clench without permission. Sharp jaw. Beard trimmed. Eyes that were dead. Like he was alive but someone had switched off all the light inside him. And he was looking straight at me. "How much?" he asked. His voice was deep. Tired. Jozi accent. I tried to act professional. I fixed my green dress — the only good dress I own, the one that makes my waist look small. I touched my beaded necklaces, the ones my grandmother gave me to protect my frequency. "R50 for 15 minutes," I said. "R100 if you want past life, future, and energy cleansing." He didn't look at my tarot cards. He looked at my mouth. Then at my chest where my necklace sat. "Do you do house calls?" he asked. That was new. "No. I read here. At the market." He sat down. On my plastic crate. It cracked loudly and Mama from next stall laughed. He didn't laugh. He leaned forward. So close I could smell him — expensive cologne, coffee, and underneath it, sleepless nights and fear. "I have tried five mediums," he said, low so only I could hear. "Two from KZN. One from Limpopo. One famous one from Soweto with 100k followers. They all ran out of my house before midnight. Screaming. One pissed himself." My hands went cold. That's not a normal haunting. That's a powerful spirit. "What is in your house?" I whispered. "My girlfriend died in my house eight months ago," he said. "In the third floor bedroom. They say she haunts me because I let her die. I haven't slept in that house since. I sleep in my office downstairs. I want you to tell me if she still loves me or if she wants to kill me." I should have said no. My grandmother's number one rule: Never enter a house where love died with blood. But his smoke was getting thicker. And his eyes — God, his eyes were begging me. I reached across the table. "Give me your hand. Let me read you. Free." He hesitated. Then placed his hand in mine. His hand was big. Warm. Rough — a man who works, not just signs papers. The second our skin touched, my gift exploded. I didn't see a reading. I saw a movie. A white mansion in Sandton. Three floors. Rain. A beautiful woman in a white dress, hanging from a ceiling fan. Her neck broken. Her eyes open. And a pair of man's hands around her neck — not a rope. Hands. Someone strangled her, then hung her to make it look like suicide. And behind that woman, a younger girl in school uniform, crying, pointing at the man. Trying to stop him. I gasped and pulled my hand back like I was electrocuted. My cards fell on the floor. "You didn't let her die," I said, my voice shaking so loud the whole market could hear. "Someone killed her. In your house. They made it look like she killed herself." The whole market went quiet. The man's face changed. The deadness vanished. For the first time, he looked alive — and furious. "What did you say?" He stood up so fast my table shook. He grabbed my wrist — not to hurt me, but to keep me from running. His grip was iron. Hot. "Who sent you? Did my brother send you?" "No one sent me!" I tried to pull away but he was too strong. My green dress slipped a little off my shoulder. His eyes dropped there, then snapped back up, guilty. "I swear, I saw it when I touched you! There's a young girl too! In uniform! She is still there!" He froze. The smoke around his heart pulsed. "My sister," he whispered. "My sister died in that house eight years ago. She was wearing her school uniform. On her birthday. How... how do you know that? I never put that on the internet. I never told anyone." I was breathing hard. My chest rising and falling. His hand still holding my wrist. The chemistry between us was sick and wrong — in the middle of a ghost story, my body was reacting to him. "Because she is still there," I said softly. "She is not haunting you. She is protecting you. From whoever killed your girlfriend." He let go of my wrist like my skin burned him. He stepped back. Ran a hand through his hair. He looked broken and beautiful at the same time. "I am Liam Liam Blackwood," he said. "CEO of Blackwood Holdings. If you Google me, I am worth R4.2 billion. And I cannot sleep in my own house." He reached into his suit jacket. Not a wallet. A bank envelope. He placed it on my bowl of spinach. I opened it. I almost fainted. R100,000. In cash. "R100,000," he said. "To spend seven nights in my Sandton mansion. You will sleep on the second floor. I will sleep on the first. If you can make whatever is in that house leave, the money is yours. If you can't, I will still pay you R20,000 for trying and my driver will bring you back to Durban. No questions." R100,000. My rent was three months late. My grand mother's hospital bill was R18,000. My little brother needed school shoes. And this man — this dangerously handsome, haunted billionaire — was looking at me like I was the first real thing he had seen in years. "What if I die?" I asked. "Then I die with you," he said simply. Like it was a promise. The market people were staring. Mama was whispering to another mama. Grandma always said: When your gift scares you, that's when you must use it. "Seven nights?" I said. "Seven nights," he said. "Starting tonight. My driver waits outside with a black G-Wagon. You have ten minutes to pack your table." He put his black business card on top of the money. It only had a name and number. No company logo. LIAM BBLACKWOOD 082... He turned to leave. Then stopped. Looked back at me, at my lips, at my green dress that was still slipped off my shoulder. "Zara," he said — he read my name from my small sign. "Wear that green dress tonight. The spirits like green." Then he walked away, his black smoke trailing behind him, and every woman in Victoria Street Market watched him go. I stood there with R100,000 in a Shoprite bag, my heart beating like a drum, my hand still tingling where he touched me. Little did I know that, he would lock me in that mansion. That by Night 3, he would kiss me against the haunted bathroom wall. And by Night 7, he would be obsessed enough to ask me to marry him. I packed my tarot cards. I poured my water on the ground for protection. I shouted to Mama: "Mama, keep my table! I'm going to be a billionaire's spiritual reader!" And I walked out of Victoria Street Market toward the black G-Wagon that would change my whole life. At 9 PM, the gates of his Sandton mansion opened for me. The house was waiting.