The Grey Heir

THE GREY ESTATE

THE GREY ESTATE

NIRA POV

The driver left me at the curb of my old building with the cardboard box beside me and a quiet good night before driving away, leaving me standing in the rain outside the place I had called home for years.

I climbed the stairs still soaked from the rain, expecting to walk into the apartment I had shared with David for years, but when I put my key into the lock it would not turn, and after trying it again I finally looked closer and saw that the lock had been changed with a new metal plate sitting over the old one.

Finally, the landlord came up from downstairs and stopped when he saw my wet clothes and the box in my arms.

“David already paid the remaining rent,” he said. “He asked for the locks to be changed this afternoon.”

I stared at him. “You changed the locks without telling me?”

“The apartment is under his name now, and I have no interest in getting involved in your marriage problems,” he said. “If you don't leave the hallway, I'll call the police.”

I stood there for a moment before picking up my box and walking back down the stairs.

I sat on the cold concrete steps with the box beside me and reached into my coat pocket, finding only twenty dollars left.

That was all I had.

My mother was gone, my marriage was over, my career had been taken from me and now I did not even have a place to sleep.But I was still alive.

That mattered more than everything else.

With nowhere else to go, I walked into the first twenty-four-hour diner I found and took a corner booth, knowing I had only twenty dollars left but still using some of it to buy one cup of cheap black coffee so they would not throw me out, then stayed beneath the buzzing lights through the night with the Grey Estate contract open in front of me.

My body still ached from the bruises at the gala, my scrubs were stained and my eyes burned from exhaustion, but I kept reading the contract because I needed to understand exactly what I was agreeing to before I stepped into William Grey's world.

The position was simple enough on paper.

I would work as William's residential psychiatrist and live at the Grey Estate while treating him during his episodes.

The protection was what caught my attention.

William was offering legal protection from Saint Jude's and from David, which meant that for the first time since waking up in this second life, I had someone powerful enough to stand between me and the people who had destroyed me before.

As the sky outside the diner slowly turned gray, I closed the contract and rested my head against the booth.

At seven, I washed my face with cold water in the small diner bathroom and smoothed my hair as best I could before picking up the cardboard box and leaving.

I reached the gates of the Grey Estate at 7:45, fifteen minutes early.

The estate sat on a high hill above the city, surrounded by tall stone walls and dark pine trees while heavy iron gates blocked the long road leading toward the house.

Soft rain fell on my shoulders as I waited, and after a moment the camera above the gate turned toward me and focused on my face and the box in my arms.

The gates opened with a heavy metallic sound.

I walked up the long driveway toward the gray stone house that looked more like a fortress than a home, and when I reached the marble steps a tall man in a perfect black suit stepped outside holding an umbrella.

It was Halo, William's personal assistant.

In my last life he had been polite and careful with his words, but today his eyes moved over my wet clothes and the cardboard box with clear disapproval.

“Dr. Dickson,” he said in his cool even voice. “You are early. Master William prefers people to arrive exactly on time and properly dressed.”

“I am early, not late,” I answered. “And these are the clothes I had left after last night.”

Halo did not offer to carry the box and simply turned toward the entrance.

“Follow me. He is waiting in the private wing.”

I followed him inside.

The foyer was wide and quiet with marble floors and old paintings covering the walls, and my wet shoes made soft sounds against the floor as we climbed the curved stairs and walked down a long carpeted hallway.

Two security men stood outside a pair of heavy double doors.

Halo knocked once before opening them.

The private wing looked like a high-end medical suite mixed with a study, with large windows showing the misty gardens while monitors and medical equipment sat along one wall.

William sat behind a dark wooden desk wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his eyes moved over me slowly as I stepped inside.

“You look like you did not sleep,” he said.

“I didn't,” I answered as I set the box down. “The locks on my apartment were changed, so I spent the night in a diner.”

Halo spoke from behind me in a careful but firm voice.

“Master William, her current situation creates certain risks. It may be better to review other candidates.”

William raised one hand without looking at him.

Halo went quiet at once.

“I am not interested in other candidates,” William said as he opened a drawer, took out a thick blue folder and pushed it across the desk toward me. “That is my full medical history. Read it.”

I opened the file.

The pages were dense with scans, lab results and notes from previous doctors, and as I turned through them I remembered how different this moment was from my previous life.

I had never been allowed anywhere near William's medical records back then.

Everything about his condition had been kept away from me, and I had been expected to treat him without knowing what was really happening inside his body.

Now the charts were right in front of me.

I turned the pages slowly, reading the patterns.

Repeated sedation.

Rising neurological markers.

Notes about sudden sensory overload that matched what I had seen at the gala.

His mother's records showed the same progression years earlier.

“This is not only a psychiatric condition,” I said after a few minutes. “There is clear neurological inflammation that builds before the episodes. The heavy sedation the other doctors used would have made the pressure worse, not better.”

William watched me without speaking, and a small shift moved through his expression that looked close to surprise.

Halo stepped forward again.

“She has had the file for only a short time. It is too early to—”

“Enough,” William said quietly.

Halo stopped.

William stood and walked around the desk until he faced me, and his eyes dropped briefly to the fading bruise on my collarbone before returning to my face.

“You will live in the guest room,” he said. “When an episode starts, you are the only one allowed near me. You answer to me alone. My security and my lawyers will deal with the hospital and David Vance if you want.”

Halo placed a thicker contract on the desk along with a black fountain pen.

“This is the full residential agreement,” he said.

I looked down at the pages.

In my previous life, I had accepted the Grey Estate contract because I had needed somewhere to go, but I had never understood how much the position would change my life or how deeply William's condition was connected to everything happening around him.

This time I was not walking into the estate blindly.

I knew what waited for me.

William picked up the pen and held it out to me.

“What do you want from me in return?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment.

“Stay when it gets bad,” he said. “That is all.”

I took the pen from his hand and signed my name.

As I placed the pen back on the desk, I looked around the private wing and realized that I had just stepped through the gates of the Grey Estate with nothing but a cardboard box and less than twenty dollars in my pocket, but for the first time since waking up in this second life, I felt like I had finally been given a chance to change what happened next.