Chapter 3: What the Mask Hides

Julian glanced toward the ceiling, then lowered his voice.

"Eight months ago, our fathers were buried on the same day. Four coffins, four sons in black suits." He turned his teacup slowly in its saucer. "The fourth young master never shed a single tear. Not at the funeral, not at the grave, not after. And the next morning, he put on that mask."

Elara's fingers tightened around the cabinet door. "Why?"

"No one knows. He won't say, and he won't take it off." Julian gave a short, humorless laugh. "I'm his cousin. I'm a doctor. And I haven't seen his whole face since that day."

A cold, strange ache settled in her chest. She thought of the warm hand at her waist, the unsteady heartbeat beneath her palm. *Nobody that cold has a heartbeat like that.*

"He seems lonely," she said quietly.

Julian studied her for a long moment. "Be careful, Elara. Lonely people bite."

At the top of the stairs, a shadow shifted. A hand curled tighter around the rail. Then the shadow was gone, and no one had seen it.

---

The front door banged open so hard the chandelier trembled.

"HONEY, I'M HOME!"

A boy in a wrinkled hoodie and oversized headphones strode into the kitchen as if he owned the world, one arm hugging a pizza box, the other a game controller. He stopped when he saw Elara. He looked her up and down. Then he pointed at her with the controller.

"New face. Are you the girl Grandpa hired to fix us?"

"I prefer 'consultant,'" she said. "I'm Elara."

"Kai. The third young master. Genius, legend." He dropped the pizza onto the counter and flopped into a chair. "Fair warning: I don't do group hugs, family dinners, or feelings."

"Noted," Elara said sweetly. "What do you do?"

His eyes lit up. "I destroy people at video games. Do you play?"

"A little."

"Great. Loser washes the dishes for a week."

Julian groaned into his hand. "Kai, she's been here one day."

"And she's already lost her first bet." Kai grinned wickedly. "Ten minutes. Living room. Don't cry."

She smiled back, and something in it made Julian lean away. "Oh, I'm not the one who'll be crying."

---

Twelve minutes later, Kai was staring at the screen with his mouth open.

"GAME OVER," the television announced cheerfully, flashing her name in golden letters.

"That was a glitch," Kai declared. "The game is rigged."

"You picked the same character as me."

"I was *letting* you win!"

"Then please let me win again tomorrow." She tossed him the controller. "Dishes are in the kitchen. I like them sparkling."

Behind them, Julian was laughing so hard he had to sit down. It was the first time in months that the mansion had heard that sound. Kai, scowling and red to the ears, stomped toward the sink muttering, "Beginner's luck, beginner's luck, beginner's..."

For one warm, ridiculous moment, the huge house felt like a home.

Then Elara felt it, that prickle at the back of her neck, the sense of being watched. She turned toward the staircase.

No one was there. But she knew, with a certainty she couldn't explain, that someone had been.

---

That night, she lay in her silk-draped bed, staring at the ceiling.

The mansion had finally gone quiet. Two cousins had laughed with her. One had lost a bet and washed every dish in the kitchen. The third, the CEO, was a locked door and a rumor. And the fourth...

*"Am I that handsome?"*

Her cheeks warmed. She dragged the blanket over her face, then pushed it down again with a groan.

*"Are you trying to seduce me?"*

"Shameless," she muttered to the chandelier. "Completely shameless."

But the word didn't sound as sharp in the dark as it had in the daylight. She kept coming back to Julian's voice, soft and worried: *He hasn't spoken to anyone in eight months.* And then to the fourth young master's voice, low and rough, as though it had been unused for far too long, saying those words to *her*.

*Why me?*

She turned onto her side. A strip of moonlight lay across the carpet, and just beyond her door, across the hall, was his. She imagined him sitting behind it in the dark with that black mask on, a man who had buried his father and never cried, who had shut the whole world out and let a stranger fall into his arms.

*Lonely people bite,* Julian had said.

Maybe. But she had felt his hand at her waist, and it hadn't felt like a bite. It had felt like someone holding on to the last warm thing in the room.

She frowned, a thought slipping in sideways.

*Wait.*

She had fallen on him. Sat on him. Blown him a kiss, technically, and waved at the ceiling to hide it. She had gone over every single second of that afternoon at least twenty times.

And she did not even know his name.

Julian. Kai. Even the CEO had a title, if not a face. But the fourth young master was simply *the fourth*, a mask and a pair of dark eyes.

"I don't even know what to call him," she whispered into the pillow.

She would ask the housekeeper in the morning. Or Julian. Or Kai, if she could bear his gloating. Somebody in this enormous house had to know the name of the man who had looked at her as though she were the only sound in a very quiet world.

Her eyelids grew heavy. The silk sheets warmed around her. The last thing she thought, before sleep carried her under, was the sound of that low voice, and a small, stubborn wish to hear it say her name.

Across the hall, behind a heavy door, a line of golden light still glowed on the floor. It did not go out until dawn.