The rest of the morning was a masterclass in survival. I moved through the house with my head bowed so low my neck ached, trying to blend into the wallpaper. But Victoria wasn't going to let me disappear. She had spent the morning simmering in her own suspicion, and she needed a target.
I was in the middle of polishing the mahogany bannister when she called for me. Not a polite request through Harrison, but a sharp, entitled yell that echoed from the master suite.
"Sasha! Get up here! Now!"
I dropped my cloth and hurried up the stairs, my heart doing that familiar, frantic dance. I found Victoria in her dressing room, surrounded by piles of silk, lace, and several open jewelry boxes. She looked like a queen amidst a hoard of gold, but her expression was anything but royal. She was fuming.
"This room is a pigsty," she said, gesturing vaguely at a few stray threads on the carpet. "And my afternoon gown hasn't been steamed. Why are you standing there like a statue? Get to work."
I knelt on the floor to begin gathering the discarded boxes. "I'm sorry, Miss Sterling. I was finishing the main staircase."
"The staircase doesn't matter if my room is a mess," she snapped. She walked over to where I was kneeling and, with a casual, cruel flick of her foot, knocked over a stack of velvet-lined jewelry trays I had just organized. Diamonds and pearls scattered across the rug like fallen stars. "Oops. Looks like you'll have to start over. And while you're down there, scrub the baseboards. I noticed some dust earlier."
It was a blatant humiliation, a task designed purely to keep me on my knees in front of her. I didn't say a word. I just started picking up the jewels, one by one.
"You know," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a deceptively sweet tone as she watched me work, "Ethan was acting so strange this morning. All that nonsense about the library annex. He's such a dedicated worker, isn't he? Always thinking about the family business."
She stepped closer, her expensive silk hem brushing against my hand. "But he's also a man, Sasha. And men get... bored. They play with things they find lying around the house until something better comes along. Something with a real name and a real dowry."
The jab hit me harder than a physical blow. She didn't know about the cellar—not yet—but she knew exactly how to twist the knife. She was reminding me that no matter what Ethan said to me in the dark, I was "something lying around the house."
"I wouldn't know, Miss Sterling," I managed to say, my voice steady despite the roar in my ears.
"Exactly," she smirked. "You wouldn't."
She spent the next three hours making my life a living hell. She made me carry a massive, heavy mirror from the guest wing to her room just so she could see how a specific necklace caught the light. When I stumbled under the weight, she just laughed and told me to be careful not to break it, or the cost would be "taken out of my meager wages for the next decade."
By the time I was dismissed, my arms were shaking and my spirit was frayed to a thread. I was heading back to the kitchen to prep the evening tea service when I passed Mrs. Grant in the hallway. She didn't say a word, but she watched me pass with a look of intense, clinical curiosity. It was the look of someone who had found a flaw in a piece of stone and was deciding exactly where to strike.
I finally found a moment of silence in the back pantry, leaning my forehead against the cool shelving. The door opened softly behind me.
"Sasha."
I didn't turn around. I couldn't. "Go away, Ethan. She's looking for you. She's been looking for you all day."
"I know," he said, his voice closer now. He stepped into the small space and closed the door, the click of the latch sounding like a gunshot in the quiet. He reached out and turned me around, his eyes taking in the sweat on my brow and the red marks on my arms from the mirror frame. "What did she do?"
"She did what she was supposed to do," I said, my voice cracking. "She treated me like a maid. And you... you lied to her. You told her you were in the library. She doesn't believe you, Ethan. And your grandmother... she's watching me like I'm a disease she needs to cure."
"I'll handle them," he muttered, reaching out to pull me into his arms.
"You can't handle them!" I hissed, pushing against his chest. "You're getting married in two months! Every time you touch me, you're putting a target on my back. Victoria is mean, but your grandmother... she's dangerous. She knows things, Ethan. Things that could end me."
He didn't let go. Instead, he tightened his grip, his eyes burning with a desperate, reckless light. "I'm not letting them touch you. The coup is moving faster than I expected. Once I have the accounts, once the power shifts, I won't have to play these games anymore."
"And what happens to me then?" I asked, looking up at him. "Do I stay in the pantry? Do I keep cleaning the rooms where you live with your wife?"
He didn't have an answer. He just leaned down and kissed me, a hard, frustrated kiss that tasted of fear and stolen time. I knew I should pull away, I knew I should run as far from this house as my legs would carry me, but the heat of him was the only thing that made the coldness of the Grants bearable.
As we stood there, hidden amongst the jars of flour and sugar, I heard the faint, distinct sound of a floorboard creaking in the hallway outside . We froze, the breath catching in our throats.
The silence that followed was even more terrifying than the sound itself. Someone was out there. Someone was listening. And in the Grant house, silence never meant you were safe it just meant they were waiting for the right moment to strike.