Maya learned quickly that the house listened.
Not in the way people feared—no hidden microphones, no whispered secrets carried through vents—but in subtler ways. Doors remembered who closed them. Hallways reflected intention. Silence lingered longer in rooms where something had been said that shouldn’t have been.
She adapted anyway.
She had always been good at adapting.
The first act of sabotage was so small Victoria almost blamed herself for imagining it.
A meeting time changed—just slightly. A calendar entry adjusted. An email marked as read that she swore she hadn’t opened.
Charles never accused. Never reacted.
Which made it worse.
He simply began to watch more closely.
Maya noticed.
She also noticed something else, something that burned beneath her ribs every time she saw the
