Chapter 3 - The Second Feed in the Staff Quarters
Damian’s hand shot out, not to grab me, but to slam flat against the wooden wall right beside my shoulder, cringing me in place. The sheer proximity of him took my breath away; his chest rose and fell against the white cotton of his unbuttoned shirt, and I could see the rapid pulse throbbing in the hollow of his neck. With his free hand, he slipped two fingers into my scrub pocket with terrifying speed before I could twist away, snatching a corner of the folded cardstock. The paper ripped with a sharp tear, leaving the bulk of the note buried deep against my hip while Damian pulled away with only a torn fragment.
He stared down at the small piece of heavy paper in his palm, his brow furrowing as he read the scattered numbers and the trailing ink of an unfamiliar signature. "Where did this come from?" he demanded, his voice dropping an octave, raw with sudden paranoia.
Before I could answer, a sharp, metallic screech echoed from the service elevator shaft at the end of the hall—a sound that didn't belong to the central HVAC system or the routine estate maintenance. Damian's head whipped toward the noise, his instincts as a security mastermind taking over instantly. He shoved the torn paper into his trouser pocket and grabbed my wrist, his grip firm but not bruising. "Move," he ordered, pulling me toward the safety of the linen closet before darting down toward the staff quarters.
Ten minutes later, we were locked inside the tiny, windowless room where I folded linens and stored cleaning supplies. Damian had pried open the back maintenance panel of the old intercom terminal, exposing a tangle of rogue copper wires that had been spliced into the wall decades ago. By the dim light of his heavy-duty flashlight, a secondary CRT monitor flickered to life beneath the workbench—a grainy, greenish feed showing an angle of the estate's rear perimeter that didn't match any of the sixteen screens in his bunker.
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"This isn't my feed," Damian whispered, the realization draining the color from his heavy beard. "Someone tapped into the analog lines before I bought the house."
On the flickering screen, a hooded figure moved quietly past the darkened rose garden, holding a small handheld transmitter that pulsed with a rhythmic amber light. Someone else was watching Beatrice. Someone else knew about the bunker. And as Damian looked down at me in the cramped, shadowed room, the barrier between master and servant dissolved completely into a shared, terrifying truth.
