Chapter3
1094 Words
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was how quiet the world felt in this house.
No morning chatter from Mom downstairs, no smell of French toast or the sound of Dad humming on speakerphone. Instead, thick silence draped over the room like velvet, too heavy for comfort. My bedroom—if I could even call it mine—was three times the size of my old one back home. Gold-trimmed furniture, antique chandeliers, a marble fireplace that looked too clean to have ever been used. It felt like a display room in a palace, not a place for a teenage girl to actually live.
I stretched slowly, feeling the silk sheets slip down my arms. My uniformed grief hovered like perfume. I hadn’t cried since yesterday. Not because I didn’t want to. I just… couldn’t. It was like my emotions were trapped behind glass, waiting for someone to break it.
A knock broke the silence. The knock on the door wasn’t loud—but sharp.
Before I could even answer, the door opened, revealing a man in black. He bowed slightly. “Mr. Zayn requests your presence in the study.”
I blinked at him. “Now?”
He didn’t nod, didn’t smile. Just waited.
I rose, changed quickly into the clothes left on the chaise—pressed slacks and a cashmere sweater, all tags removed—and followed him down the hall, my bare feet whispering against the floor. The corridors were long, cold, and impersonal. Every wall hung with curated art, every vase placed with surgical precision. Not a single family photo.
The study door opened before we even reached it, like it had been waiting.
My grandfather sat behind a desk large enough to host a banquet. He wore a navy suit, crisp as ever, a single gold pen in his hand. No warmth touched his face as his eyes met mine.
“Sit,” he said.
I did. The chair was straight-backed and uncomfortable, built for obedience. I could feel my spine straighten without being asked.
I decided to slouch on it because why not? Then orders came in like it waited exactly for that wrong move.
“Don’t slouch. You’re a Zayn”
I immediately sat upright.
He stood and walked around the desk, sat down again in his high-backed chair, and studied me. His gray eyes were unreadable, his jaw like stone. He wasn’t the kind of man you interrupted. I waited.
“You look just like your mother did at your age,” he said finally. “Same face. Same ungrateful little mouth.”
I flinched.
He didn’t look at me for a while. He wrote something slowly on a paper I couldn’t see. My heartbeat thumped in my ears, but I stayed quiet. The silence wasn’t unfamiliar anymore—it was a weapon here.
Finally, he looked up.
“You are not a guest in this house, Olen. You are a ward. That means your behavior must reflect the standards of the Zayn legacy. That’s one thing you must understand here.”
I stared at him, unsure of what he expected me to say.
“You will follow a structure. Wake at six. Breakfast at seven. Private tutors start at eight. Physical training twice a week. You will not entertain any social distractions unless permitted. No calls. No visitors. And under no circumstance will you ask ‘why.’ Understood?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes…sir.”
A small smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Good. Then you’ll have no issue with this.”
He slid a thick document across the desk. I stared down at it.
It wasn’t a school schedule or some behavior chart. It was a contract.
My name is printed at the top. Full legal name. Olen Mirabel Zayn.
I scanned the first paragraph, feeling the pressure grow behind my eyes.
It was a behavioral agreement—worded like a corporate policy sheet. I was to agree to “disciplinary conditioning,” to “performance-based rewards,” and to “emotional neutrality.” Even my thoughts were regulated. One clause read: The ward shall maintain grace in all expressions and shall suppress emotional outbursts unbecoming of the Zayn name.
“I had my lawyers draw this up overnight,” he said. “It’s not a legal document in the traditional sense. Consider it a behavioral agreement.”
“You want me to sign this?” I asked quietly.
“No,” he replied. “I expect you to.”
My voice wavered. “Why would I—what happens if I don’t?”
His eyes didn’t flicker. “Then I call the state and inform them you are mentally unfit for custody, and I send you to live in a group home in the Bronx until you age out.”
My breath caught.
“You have a roof here. More than a roof—you have opportunity. Access. Legacy. But only if you learn your place.”
The pen was already waiting in front of me.
I didn’t touch it. Not right away. I looked at the paper again, then back at him.
He was calm. Serene, even. Like this wasn’t coercion—just good business.
I hated him.
And worse—I feared him.
But fear doesn’t always look like running. Sometimes it’s signing your name with shaking fingers because you have nowhere else to go.
I picked up the pen.
It was heavier than I expected. Probably gold.
And then, I signed. Olen Mirabel Zayn. Fourteen, orphaned, and already making deals with devils.
He didn’t say “thank you” or “good job.” He just took the paper and filed it away like a meaningless receipt. Then, he rose.
“I’ll arrange your schedule.”
“Can I call someone? Just to let someone know I’m okay?” I asked, my voice thin.
“No.”
“But—”
“You don’t need anyone else now,” he said, walking past me. “You’re a Zayn.”
I stood slowly, chest tight. The man I called grandfather wasn’t a guardian. He was a warden in a mansion-shaped prison.
As I reached the doorway, he paused behind me.
I kept looking at him waiting for him to say something to me because I felt that could be the only reason he had stopped at the door.
His voice dropped, low:
“Good girl” he said while folding the contract.
“Now let’s see if you’ll obey as beautiful as you sign”
- Writer
