Chapter Three

Sera didn’t sleep.

Not because the bed wasn’t soft it was too soft. The kind of softness that cradled you like a secret, made you forget where you were. That was dangerous.

The bedroom was dark, minimalist, eerily quiet. She lay flat on her back, fully clothed, one hand clutching her sister’s photo in the dark like a talisman.

Elise. Two years gone.

Two weeks alive.

Lucien knew something. She was sure of it. But what chilled her more was the look in his eyes when he showed her the photo.

Like it wasn’t meant to exist. Like he didn’t want her to see it but something made him show her anyway.

She sat up just after 4 a.m., the digital clock’s glow cutting a line across the floor. No footsteps. No voices. The house felt asleep.

Or sedated.

Sera slipped into her boots, silently padded to the door. It wasn’t locked.

That felt like a test too.

She moved quietly down the corridor. Cameras watched. She didn’t look up, didn’t slow her pace. If they were going to watch her, she’d let them.

But she needed something. Anything.

She passed what looked like a study. The door was ajar.

Inside: a wall of monitors. Black and white surveillance feeds. Hallways. Elevators. The front gate. But also…

A bedroom.

Her bedroom.

A feed on her. A live one.

She swallowed hard.

On the desk beneath the monitors sat an old notebook. Worn. Leather-bound. She flipped it open, scanning the pages.

Drawings. Maps. Time logs. Written in frantic cursive.

Her heart stopped.

Elise’s handwriting.

The notebook was hers.

Page after page notes about someone called Mara. Entries with dates. Times Lucien was away. Phrases like “He knows” and “Don’t trust the glass.” Then…

A last scrawled entry. Half-torn.

If you find this, don’t ask him. Follow the light behind the

The sentence ended mid-word.

“Put it down.”

The voice came from behind her low, unreadable.

Lucien.

Sera froze, still clutching the book.

She turned slowly. He stood in the doorway, barefoot, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the kind of calm that felt like a cliff edge.

“You were watching me,” she said.

“I watch everyone in my house.”

“You kept her notebook.”

“I keep everything that might hurt me.”

She stepped toward him, eyes locked. “Why didn’t you give it to me?”

Lucien studied her. “Because not everything your sister wrote was true.”

Sera opened her mouth to respond

But the monitors behind him flickered.

A new feed appeared. Static. Then a video.

A woman.

Elise.

Looking directly at the camera.

She was alive. And she looked scared.

But what she whispered wasn’t what Sera expected.

It was a name.

Not Lucien’s.

Someone else’s.

And the moment she said it the screen went black.

Sera lunged forward, but the screen was already blank static erased, the feed gone like it had never been real.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded, turning on Lucien. “Why is there a live feed of her?”

Lucien didn’t move. “That wasn’t live.”

Her stomach twisted. “Don’t lie to me ”

“I’m not,” he said, voice low, deliberate. “That was recorded. But not by me.”

Sera stared at him, heart hammering. “Then who?”

Lucien finally stepped fully into the room, the light from the monitors washing over his face. The weariness in his eyes wasn’t exhaustion it was something deeper. Older.

“I’ve been trying to find that out for over a year.”

His words hit like ice water.

She blinked. “You’ve been looking for her?”

“Not the way you think.” He walked to the monitor, tapped a small keyboard built into the desk. Nothing came up. “That footage surfaced two months ago. Anonymous drive. No source. No metadata. Just the file.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” Sera snapped.

Lucien turned to her. “Who would I tell, Sera? The police? The same ones that buried her case? The ones her disappearance embarrassed?”

Sera opened her mouth, then shut it.

He had a point. And she hated that.

“So you’ve been watching it on a loop for fun?” she asked, voice cracking.

“No,” he said. “I’ve been watching it for the moment I missed.”

“What moment?”

“The lie.”

Sera stepped back from him. “You think she lied?”

“I think she was protecting someone,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Or hiding something.”

The silence stretched, heavy.

Then he said it.

“The name she whispered did you catch it?”

Sera nodded, her voice small. “Aiden.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Lucien didn’t answer right away. His fingers moved over the keyboard again. A new screen opened.

A list of names.

Dozens of them. Names crossed out. Red flags. Dossiers.

Sera’s eyes scanned the page until she saw it.

Aiden Mara.

Her blood ran cold. “Mara… your assistant.”

“She’s not my assistant,” Lucien said quietly.

Sera looked at him. “Then what is she?”

Lucien stared at the screen, something unreadable flickering in his gaze.

“She’s the reason Elise disappeared.”

Sera's breath hitched. The name pulsed in her head like a warning bell: Aiden Mara. The woman in black. The one who had scanned her, silent and precise. The one who hadn’t blinked when Lucien exposed her lies.

“You said she’s not your assistant,” Sera said slowly, carefully. “Then what is she? Security? Handler? Spy?”

Lucien exhaled through his nose. “Once, she was my shadow. I trusted her with everything. And Elise…” He trailed off, jaw flexing.

“What happened?” Sera demanded. “Tell me.”

“She got too close,” he said simply. “To something dangerous. To Mara.”

Sera stepped forward. “You think Mara did something to her?”

Lucien shook his head. “I think she let someone else do it. And now she’s covering her tracks.”

Sera’s thoughts spun. “But Elise said Aiden. That’s a man’s name.”

Lucien’s eyes darkened. “Aiden was Mara’s brother. Dead. Or at least, that’s what the records say.”

“And you think ”

“I don’t think anything,” he snapped. Then, quieter: “Not yet. But if Elise spoke his name before she disappeared, it means she found something. Something neither Mara nor I knew existed.”

Sera’s hands trembled around Elise’s notebook.

The last entry follow the light behind the...

Behind the what?

She turned toward the leather journal again, flipping through the pages. Half the writing was coded: symbols, shorthand. But one line stood out now more than ever, underlined three times in red ink.

“Trust no one in glass.”

Glass.

Glass windows. Glass walls.

Glass screens.

Lucien stepped beside her, reading over her shoulder. He went very still.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t have a single room in this penthouse without glass surveillance,” he said, voice flat. “If she wrote that, she was telling you not to trust what you see in here.”

Sera looked up at him.

For the first time, Lucien didn’t look composed.

He looked unnerved.

She barely had time to react when a soft chime echoed through the room.

Lucien turned to a wall panel. A single red light was blinking.

“What is that?” she asked.

He pressed his palm against the glass panel. A screen lit up. A message:

UNKNOWN DEVICE DETECTED. SURVEILLANCE FEED BREACHED.

His jaw clenched. “We’re not alone.”

The lights in the hallway outside flickered just once.

Then everything went black.