Chapter 2: The Mansion Gates

I followed him through a hallway that echoed with every footstep. Above buzzed the lights, flickering faintly with a buzz. My trainers squealed on the smooth floor. I saw myself on a mirror-lined wall and hardly identified the girl peering back dark bags under her eyes, tangled hair, a jumper two sizes too big, sleeves strained and frayed. I seemed like someone from outside, not here. 

  Opening a large steel door, Benedict entered what appeared to be a personal vault walls lined with shelves of records, safe boxes, and one heavy table in the middle. He drew out a big envelope and set it on the table. It thumped with a pleasing force.

  “This should be enough to cover her treatment.”

  My hand moved on instinct, reaching for it like a moth drawn to fire. But before my fingers touched it, he slid a contract in front of me.

  “You’ll sign this,” he said, tone matterof fact. “Agreement of service. Payment in labor. No exceptions.”

  I hesitated. Something didn’t feel right.

  But then I thought of Mom, coughing up blood in the middle of the night. The way her body trembled. Her whisper, 

  “Don't give up, even though we both knew we already had, seemed subdued.” I grabbed the pen and furiously wrote my name, heart thumping with every letter.

  “There,” I said, sliding it back.

  Benedict smiled again. This time, it reached his eyes.

  “You really should’ve read it,” he said.

  My gut twisted. “What?”

  But he was already closing the vault. “You belong to me now, Izora. Congratulations.”

  After signing this agreement to work for me she would be about to pay back. I'll take her daughter away as punishment. For my sister Disobedient to me her elder bother. He thought to himself.

  -

  I stared at the paper in my hand long after I left the mansion. The thick envelope pressed to my chest, still warm from Benedict Eryx’s fingers.

  My fingers curled around the signature line I hadn’t bothered to read. Something about the way he’d smirked like he’d just closed a deal rather than saved a life sat like ice in my gut.

  But none of that mattered right now.

  I had the money.

  I took the first bus back home, watching the city blur past the window as if my life hadn’t just taken a sharp turn off a cliff. Maybe I had sold myself my pride, my future, my freedom but if it kept my mother alive, then so be it.

  I arrived at the flat and dropped to her bedside on knees. I said, "Mom," pushing my forehead to hers. 

  "We have it. You are going to be fine.” Her lips opened to the slightest smile while her eyes flickered open, blurry and unfocused. She sighed, "My girl. How did you get.” 

  “It's okay mom I'll take you to a good hospital”

  I didn’t tell her what I’d done.

  ---

  Three days later, the hospital admitted her for urgent treatment. The doctors didn’t ask questions about the money. They just took it and started the procedures. I watched them wheel her down the sterile hall with her hand in mine until I couldn’t follow any further.

  Then I waited in the waiting area, clutching that moment like a delicate glass fragment. That seems to be the toughest component.

  something was wrong.

  —–

  Like the sluggish pulse of a war drum, the grandfather clock in the corner punctuated the silence of the office. The gentle golden light of the antique chandelier above was absorbed by polished mahogany walls. Like a memory no one could quite shake, the smells of ancient books, aged leather, and faint cigar smoke hung about. 

  Benedict Eryx poured two fingers of scotch into a crystal glass from the open bar cart in his office, his navy-blue suit neat and the silver watch on his wrist catching the light. He was not sipping from it. His jaw closed a little too tightly, like a guy expecting the blast of a bomb he had just equipped himself. His fingers tightened around the rim. Paperwork, meetings, bribes disguised as business lunches, and whispers from the kind of guys who never used their actual names had made for a rough week. And right now this as well. The conference. 

  The sound of Italian leather shoes resonated in the marble-floored corridor outside, getting louder until the double doors were opened without ceremony. A tall man swooped in like a steel-made shadow of smoke.

  “Welcome, Mr. Kaiser Eirian,” Benedict said, placing the untouched glass down with a soft clink.

  Kaiser didn't acknowledge the greeting. From the rain outside, his storm-grey coat was still damp; its fitted edges were powdered with drops that hung to the cloth like secrets. Underneath, his black suit was immaculate, cut with such merciless accuracy to seem carved to his figure. a twisted tight silk tie in blood-red. His black, slightly damp hair curled at the back of his neck. His presence pulled the warmth from the room.

  "I don't have time to wait, Benedict," he murmured, his voice low, slanted with that calm authority that required cooperation but not asked it. 

  Benedict nodded tightly and walked to the desk, opening the top drawer to get a black folder. Thick, several-page bound in a leather clasp held together with a gold-embossed string.

  “Here is the marriage contract you requested, sir,” he said, his tone measured.

  Kaiser didn’t sit. He flipped the folder open on the edge of the desk and scanned the front page, eyes flicking over the words like a man trained to see through bullshit and beauty alike. His fingers, long and ringless, lifted the pen resting beside it and scratched his name in ink that looked darker than blood.

  No pause. No hesitation. Not even a breath.

  The scratching of the pen echoed in the otherwise silent room.

  Benedict watched him closely. 

  “Take it to my fiance Aralyn to sign,” Kaiser said, his voice still flat, businesslike.

  But then something changed.

  His eyes, cold and calculating, darted to the other side of the page. A stillness swept over him not a pause, not a breath, but something deeper. The kind of silence that howls before the storm hits.

  “You didn’t tell me you’ve taken it to her to sign before me,” Kaiser said, tone sharpening like a blade drawn from its sheath.

  Benedict blinked once, measured his response. “No, I did not, sir.”

  Kaiser turned the contract slightly, fingers hovering over a small, neatly written signature that didn’t belong.

  He tapped the ink with his finger's pad and questioned, "whose signature is that?" The name was delicate, nearly reluctant in its curvature, like someone had signed from desperation rather than bravado.

  Benedict drowned, stepped closer. His brow furrowed as he read it again. The sharp scent of tension cut through the office like the tang of steel.

  “That’s impossible,” Benedict muttered, voice cracking for the first time in years.

  Kaiser’s gaze sliced through him. “That’s not Aralyn’s signature.”

  “No,” Benedict whispered, barely audible. “No, it isn’t.”

  Silence fell like a guillotine.