Chapter 4 - The Voice in the Shadows
The guest room on the ground floor of the east wing was large, high-ceilinged, and smelled of cedar and old paper. It was furnished with an iron bed, a mahogany dresser, and a small writing desk that overlooked the frozen south garden.
It was ten minutes past two in the morning.
Grace sat on the edge of the bed in her flannel nightgown, her knees pulled up to her chest. She couldn't sleep. The mansion was too quiet—not the cozy, familiar quiet of her small apartment in Waukegan where she could hear the rumble of the streetcars and the distant hum of the highway, but a heavy, watchful silence that felt like a predator waiting in the dark.
She got up, pulled her navy cardigan over her nightgown, and unlocked the heavy door of her room.
The corridor was lit by dim, low-level floor nightlights that cast long, golden strips across the oriental runner.
She walked softly down the hall toward the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea. As she passed the entrance to Julian’s study, she noticed a warm line of light cutting across the floor from the partially open door.
She stopped.
It was two in the morning. Julian’s schedule explicitly stated that he retired at eleven thirty PM.
She stepped closer to the gap in the door, keeping her movements silent.
Julian was sitting in his wheelchair near the window, surrounded by the dark outline of the frozen garden outside. The room was lit only by a single green banker’s lamp on his desk.
He wasn't writing.
He was holding a small, silver pocket watch—an antique piece with a shattered glass face. He was running his thumb over the cracked crystal, over and over again, in a rhythmic, heartbreaking loop.
Then, he spoke.
The sound was so faint, so raspy and unused, that Grace almost thought it was the wind scraping against the glass.
"Clara..." he whispered.
The name hung in the stillness of the room, fragile as spun glass.
It was the first time Grace had heard his voice in the six days she had worked at the estate. It wasn't the voice of a cold, distant aristocrat or a bitter recluse. It was the voice of a man who was still bleeding inside a wound that had been inflicted seven years ago.
Grace took a quiet step backward, intending to slip away before he noticed her.
"I know you're there," Julian said.
He didn't turn his chair. He didn't raise his voice. He kept his eyes fixed on the cracked pocket watch in his palm.
Grace froze. She swallowed hard, adjusting her cardigan, and stepped into the threshold of the room.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Vale," she said softly. "I didn't mean to intrude. I couldn't sleep."
Julian slowly turned his wheelchair toward her.
In the soft, green glow of the desk lamp, his face looked thinner, paler, but his gray eyes—the exact duplicate of Dominic’s—were shockingly sharp, brimming with an intelligence that felt almost overwhelming in its intensity.
"You don't need to apologize," Julian said. His voice was rough, like gravel being ground together, but his diction was impeccably clear. "You move like a shadow, Grace. But the cameras in this room click every time they re-center on motion."
He pointed a thin finger toward the small black dome mounted in the corner of the ceiling crown molding.
Grace looked up at the lens. "Your brother."
"Dominic," Julian affirmed, a small, ghost-like smile touching his lips for a fraction of a second. "He thinks he’s invisible behind those glass screens. He thinks because he built this room, he controls everything that happens inside it."
"He's trying to keep you safe," Grace said gently, taking two steps into the room and resting her hands on the back of a leather armchair.
"He's keeping me alive," Julian corrected, setting the broken pocket watch onto the desk beside his legal pad. "There is a profound difference between staying alive and living, Grace. Dominic forgot that seven years ago. He locked me in this house, he locked himself in his office, and he put guards on the gate so neither of us would ever have to feel the world touch us again."
Grace looked at him, feeling a lump rise in her throat. "Why did you stop talking?"
Julian looked down at his useless legs, covered by a dark plaid wool blanket.
"Because when you speak, people expect answers," he said softly. "They expect you to tell them how you're feeling, whether you're recovering, whether you forgive the driver who hit you, whether you forgive yourself for surviving when the woman you loved died in the seat beside you."
He looked back up at her, his gray eyes locking onto hers with a stark, raw vulnerability.
"It was easier to be silent," he whispered. "Until you left that note under my tea."
Grace looked at the legal pad on his desk, covered in his tight, precise block lettering.
"Why did you answer?" she asked.
Julian reached out, his pale fingers touching the sheet of paper where her question about the detective was written.
"Because for seven years, everyone who entered this room asked me if I wanted more water, if the room was too cold, or if I needed my medication," Julian said, his raspy voice trembling slightly with emotion. "You were the first person who asked me what I was thinking."
In the surveillance room three floors above, Dominic Vale sat in total dark, staring at screen four.
The audio feed from Julian’s room—a feed he had kept muted for fourteen months because there had never been anything to hear—was turned up to maximum volume.
Julian’s raspy voice was echoing through the speakers, filling the dark security room with a sound Dominic had prayed to hear for seven long, agonizing years.
May you like
Dominic’s hands were clamped onto the arms of his leather chair so tightly the seams were ripping. Tears he hadn't shed since the night of the crash were welling in his eyes, reflecting the blue-white glare of the monitors.
"He's talking..." Dominic choked out to the empty room, his voice breaking into a rough sob. "My God, he's talking to her."
