Chapter 20

Compiling the Threads

She moved like a silent ghost through the crowded service areas and grand halls. 

Her eyes, always on the lookout, took in the subtleties of the servants' interactions, the brief looks on their faces that revealed hidden anxieties and brewing grudges.

In order to find any possible weaknesses in the Romano household's seemingly

impenetrable façade a whisper, a glance, a gesture that might allude to an ally she started cautiously testing the waters.

Violet's silent attention was drawn to Lita, the young maid with the wide, terrified eyes that never stopped.

 Unquestionably real was Lita's fear, which seemed to cling to her very being.

It was palpable, a steady shudder in her hands, a tense flicker of her eyes that revealed a deep-seated fear of the walls that surrounded them.

But beneath that obvious fear, Violet detected something else– a glimmer of something rebellious in Lita's dark eyes, a secret glimmer of bitterness that suggested a partially intact spirit.

 It was a silent revolt, a longing for something more than the never-ending cycle of drudgery and fear.

In an effort to provide a silent reassurance and acknowledge their common situation, Violet would frequently hover close to Lita, moving slowly and deliberately as she arranged flowers in a vase or dusted a distant corner.

However, Mateo, the young groundskeeper, was the focus of her most audacious and crucial venture. 

Violet had always found his quiet strength and unassuming loyalty to be a sharp

contrast to the poisonous personalities that characterized the Romano family.

A silent defender of the expansive gardens, which provided a rare oasis of tranquility in the tumultuous household, he appeared to move through the estate with a grace that came from a profound respect for the land. 

Using the lessons she had forgotten as a child, Violet started

to try secret communication.

She thought back to her father's codes, the lighthearted ciphers he had taught her, which

disguised their actual function as a word and number game. 

She would leave subtle marks as she passed Mateo in the dimly lit hallways while on her cleaning rounds.

For example, a particular cleaning cloth arrangement, a faint chalk mark on a hidden corner

of a stone bench in the garden, or a flower arranged in a particular way all of which were

pieces of a larger message, an almost imperceptible invitation to a private conversation.

She longed for an answer, for any indication that he understood, for any hint that he might be

prepared to risk the Romanos' wrath in order to help her.

 Fearful of being found, the waiting was excruciating, a slow, torturous crawl every day.

Every time Mateo was close by, her heart would race, her senses searching for any

recognition, any glimmer of recognition in his gentle gaze. 

She persisted in leaving her coded messages, a silent protest against the oppressive quiet, a last-ditch hope that she wasn't completely alone in this opulent cage.

Then, one evening, she was gathering abandoned gardening tools from a dim corner of the enormous greenhouse, where the air was thick with the aroma of wet soil and orchids in

bloom, when she noticed a faint movement. 

Mateo stopped with his back to her, tending to a

row of struggling saplings.

Calloused from years of work, his hand reached out and touched a small ceramic pot she

had placed with a single red rosebud carefully angled toward the northern light earlier that day.

 It was a question cloaked in a routine maintenance task, one of her coded signals.

 He didn't look back. 

He remained silent.

 However, his fingers gently moved the pot as he leaned over the plant.

And a single, urgent word was etched with the tip of a small trowel on the damp earth beneath it. 

An answer to her cries of desperation. 

A lifeline tossed over the edge of her loneliness.

 "Listen." 

The word throbbed in the quiet, a silent declaration of a secret bond, a pledge of secrets, and a dangerous way ahead.