Unknown Man

CHAPTER eight 

Morning light filtered through the heavy curtains, casting long shadows across the bedroom floor. I stood beside Ethan's bed again, the basin of warm water and the soft cloth in my hands. I had been here for several days now, and each day blended into the next: feeding, cleaning, watching, caring for a man who could not care for himself, pretending everything was normal when nothing about this place felt normal at all.

I dipped the cloth into the warm water and wrung it out, then began wiping down his chest, my eyes fixed on the steady rise and fall of his breathing. My mind wandered to the voices I had heard yesterday. The man in the expensive suit, the file under his arm, the way he had walked past me without a second glance. The cameras. The one that remained active while the others were supposedly removed. Ethan's body, too fit, too healthy for a man who had been in a coma for months.

And the truth I was beginning to suspect, the one I was too afraid to say out loud.

I moved the cloth lower, wiping his stomach, his sides, his hips, trying to keep my mind on the task instead of the questions crowding it. It was difficult. Every part of me was screaming that something was wrong, that I was missing a piece of the puzzle.

I reached for the waistband of his pants, my fingers trembling slightly, and pulled them down just enough to clean around his hips. I had done this many times now, and I had learned to detach, to focus on the task rather than the man.

Then my hand slipped. Just slightly.

My fingers brushed against the part of him I had been carefully avoiding, and I froze, my breath catching in my throat.

And then I felt it.

A movement. A twitch. A response.

I jerked my hand away like I had been burned, my heart pounding, and stared at his face. Had he just moved? Had I imagined it, my exhausted mind playing tricks, seeing signs where there were none?

He did not move again. He lay there, still and silent, his face peaceful, as if nothing had happened. But I knew what I had felt.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. "Are you awake? Are you pretending?"

He did not answer. He did not open his eyes. But I could not shake the feeling that he was listening, that he was aware, playing some game I did not understand.

I backed away from the bed, my hands shaking. What if he had been awake this entire time, watching me, waiting for the right moment to reveal himself? The thought was terrifying. It was also, somehow, thrilling.

I sank into the chair beside his bed, my body heavy with exhaustion, and stared at his face, willing him to open his eyes and tell me the truth. He remained still, a statue carved from marble.

I do not know how long I sat there. Minutes, maybe hours. The light outside the window shifted, the shadows growing longer as the day faded into evening. I should have gotten up. I should have left. But I could not move.

---

At the far end of the estate, in a room lit only by a single lamp, a man leaned back in his chair, phone pressed to his ear, his voice pitched low.

"Yes," he said. "The intel confirms it. Both the spy and the assassin are here, inside the estate. They came in with the new candidates, exactly as we predicted. It will not be long before one of them makes a move. We will be ready when they do."

He paused, listening. Whatever was said on the other end made his expression harden.

"No," he admitted, "we still don't have names. They're careful, whoever they are. They've folded themselves into the candidates without a single misstep so far. But we have leads. We have suspicions. And we will not stop until we know exactly who they are."

A longer pause. His jaw tightened.

"The heir comes before anything else," he said finally. "Before the family's pride, before politics, before all of it. Whoever these two are, they will not touch him. We will find them first."

He ended the call and sat there a moment longer, turning the conversation over in his mind, already three steps int

o a plan no one else in the house knew existed.