Chapter: The Footsteps In The Dark
Chapter Three: Footsteps in the Dark
It began with a storm.
The kind that silences everything. That holds its breath before it breaks.
Briar had woken to the wind howling like a wounded beast, rain lashing against the old windows of her attic room. She wrapped herself in her thickest cardigan and lit a candle — the power flickered here when storms hit the cliffs hard, and the estate's generators had their own moods.
Sleep was impossible.
Something pulled at her — not fear, exactly, but restlessness. A need to move. Breathe. Escape the feeling of something waiting just beyond her door.
She slipped into slippers, gathered her cardigan tighter around herself, and stepped into the hallway.
The house was silent. Oppressively so.
Even the wind seemed to hush when she reached the end of the corridor. She descended the stairs barefoot, one hand trailing along the polished rail, the candle flickering faintly in the gloom. The storm outside roared, but inside, it was still.
Until it wasn’t.
A creak.
Briar froze halfway down the staircase.
Another sound.
Footsteps slow and deliberate, coming from the hall below.
She held her breath.
A shadow moved at the base of the stairs. Tall. Broad. Unmistakable.
Leo.
He was dressed in black again, a loose shirt clinging to his frame, the sleeves rolled up, hair damp as though he’d stepped out into the rain. But his eyes were colder than the storm, sharper than thunder.
They locked on her with sudden, unmistakable intensity.
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
For one long breathless moment, they stared at each other like two ghosts caught haunting the same space.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was low, rough-edged. Not curious. Accusing.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She tried to keep her tone neutral but steady, even though the air felt like it might snap between them. “The storm.”
“Storms are no excuse for wandering,” he said. “Especially not at night.”
Briar’s hand tightened on the candleholder. “I wasn’t wandering. I was… restless.”
“And this house isn’t safe for restlessness,” he replied.
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
Leo stepped closer. His movements were fluid, quiet, like a predator used to silence.
“It means you don’t know what you’re playing with.”
“I’m not playing,” she said, voice sharper now. “I work here. I live here. If there are rules, someone should bother to explain them instead of just glaring from balconies.”
He stopped just a few steps away, close enough that she could see the storm light catch in his eyes — not just dark, but furious. Or maybe... scared?
“No one forced you to come,” he said. “And no one’s stopping you from leaving.”
There it was. The chill. The coldness she'd heard whispered in every servant’s sidelong glance. The reason the staff never referred to him by name.
Master Moretti. The recluse. The storm inside the house.
“You don’t scare me,” she said before she could think better of it.
“Maybe you should be scared.” he replied.
They stared at each other. The rain rattled the windows. The wind screamed through the eaves like an omen.
And then something shifted.
He looked down — not at her face, but at her hands. Her bare feet. The candle trembled in her grip.
His jaw tightened. “Go back to bed.”
He turned.
“Leo,” she said quietly, not even sure why she used his name — only that it slipped from her lips like instinct.
He paused.
That pause spoke volumes. Like a thread pulled too tight.
She expected him to keep walking.
Instead, he turned back to her. Slowly. Eyes unreadable.
“No one here calls me that.”
“I’m not no one,” she said, softly. “And you don’t scare me enough to stop trying to understand.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. The silence between them was louder than the storm. More intimate than touch.
Then — so quiet she almost didn’t hear it — he said, “You should.”
And he disappeared into the dark corridor.
She returned to her room, but sleep didn’t find her. Not because of the storm. Not because of fear.
Because for the first time in years, someone had looked at her like she was dangerous too.
And it thrilled her.
The next day, the rain had passed. The staff resumed their quiet duties. No one spoke of the storm. No one asked where she had gone.
But when she entered the grand dining room to dust the window panes, she found something unexpected.
On the mantel, in a place she hadn’t touched, lay a folded scrap of parchment.
She picked it up carefully.
Unfolded it.
Three words, written in elegant ink:
Don’t follow me.
Her breath hitched.
No signature. No flourish.
But the handwriting was precise. Familiar. Unmistakable.
Leo.
And that was when she realized: she’d already started following him — in shadows, in words, in questions no one else dared ask.
And she didn’t intend to stop.
