The Keeper's Forbidden Housemaid

The Rules

Mira POV

The scream stopped. Then footsteps. Fast ones, coming toward my door.

I froze on the edge of the bed, heart slamming against my ribs. The footsteps stopped outside my room. A shadow moved under the door. Then nothing. Whoever it was just stood there, not knocking, not leaving.

"Hello?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

No answer. The shadow slid away. Whoever it was walked off into the dark.

I didn't sleep that night. Not really.

By morning, I told myself I'd imagined it. That's what fear does, it makes ghosts out of shadows. I splashed water on my face, pulled on the black uniform folded at the end of my bed, and went down to breakfast, because a job was a job, and nineteen dollars doesn't stretch far.

Cade was already at the table. He didn't look up.

"Sit," he said. "We only do this once."

I sat.

"Rule one." He didn't touch his coffee. "Never enter the east wing." He held up a finger, then another.

"Rule two. Never ask about the locked room."

A third finger. "Rule three. Never leave the grounds without my permission."

Then the last. "Rule four. Never speak to me unless I speak first."

"That's four rules for a housekeeping job."

His eyes came up to mine for the first time. Cold. Flat. "The last person who broke one of them didn't get a fifth chance."

I should have asked what that meant. I didn't. I just nodded, because the alternative was walking back out into the rain, back to Rourke, back to men who smiled before they hurt you. This house was ugly and this man was colder than the floor under my feet, but at least here, no one had put a price on my kneecaps yet.

"Understood," I said.

He stood, buttoned his jacket, and left without another word. That was it. That was the whole conversation that was supposed to keep me alive.

I broke rule four before lunch. Not on purpose. I was cleaning the sitting room off the east hall, technically not the east wing, I told myself, just close to it, when my hand brushed a loose floorboard under the window seat. It gave way easier than it should have. Underneath, wrapped in a scarf that smelled like old lavender, was a small leather book.

A diary.

I should have put it back. Every instinct I had was screaming put it back, Mira, walk away, you have three more rules to break your streak on already.

But my hands didn't listen. They opened the front cover before my brain caught up.

The handwriting was small and slanted, rushed, like whoever wrote it was always looking over her shoulder.

If you're reading this, I'm probably dead.

The book nearly fell out of my hands.

My name is Isabella. If you found this, you're new here. You're scared, and you should be. Don't trust the rules. Don't trust the silence. And whatever you do, don't let him know you found this before you understand what it means.

I heard footsteps in the hallway. Fast. Getting closer.

I shoved the diary into the waistband of my skirt, dropped to my knees, and grabbed my rag just as the door swung open.

It wasn't Cade.

It was Mrs. Harlow, white as paper, staring at the open window seat, at the floorboard I hadn't pushed all the way back down.

"You found it," she whispered. It wasn't a question.

Her hands were shaking. "Oh, God. You found it already."

"Found what?" I said, too fast, too high. "I was just cleaning..."

"Give it back. Now. Before he checks." She grabbed my wrist, nails digging in, and for the first time since I'd arrived, I saw real fear on someone's face, not the tired, careful fear everyone else wore like a uniform, but the raw, animal kind. "You don't understand what happens to people who read that book, child. You don't understand what he'll do."

My mouth went dry. "What who will do? Cade?"

Mrs. Harlow's eyes flicked to the doorway behind me, and every ounce of color that was left in her face drained away.

I turned around.

Cade was standing in the hall, watching us both. He wasn't looking at Mrs. Harlow.

He was looking at the outline of the diary pressed against my hip, plain as day beneath my skirt, and I watched something shift behind his eyes, something colder and more dangerous than anything I'd seen at breakfast.

"Mrs. Harlow," he said quietly, never breaking eye contact with me. "Leave us."

She left. She didn't look back.

The door clicked shut. It was just the two of us now, and a book I wasn't supposed to have, and a man who had just told me, this morning, exactly what happened to people who broke his rules.

"Give it to me," he said.

I should have put it back. I should have forgotten I ever found it.

Instead, I took a step backward, and I said the four words that I knew, even as they left my mouth, were about to change everything.

"I already read it."