Chapter 3 - The Web of Deceit
The silence inside the Oleso estate after nine o’clock at night was usually peaceful, but tonight, it felt like the suffocating weight of an airtight tomb.
Victoria stood in the master bathroom, wrapped in a plush silk robe, carefully smoothing an anti-aging serum across her flawless forehead. In the vanity mirror, her reflection looked radiant, the picture of refined wealth and youthful elegance. But behind that carefully maintained mask, her mind was spinning like a razor-sharp gear.
Something had felt off with Teresa earlier. The old woman had looked too pale, her pupils too dilated with fear, her voice too strained when she talked about her grandchild.
Victoria set the glass dropper down on the marble vanity with a quiet *clink*.
She picked up her phone and tapped the screen. She checked the master security app. The exterior perimeter cameras were green, recording normally. But the interior cameras in the kitchen, the dining room, and the downstairs hallways were all grayed out, displaying a soft error icon: *SIGNAL OFFLINE - MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.*
Victoria smiled faintly to herself.
She had paid an independent audiovisual technician five thousand dollars in cash three weeks ago to quietly loop those specific feeds and create a sporadic "server glitch" whenever Marcus was out of town. She was far too smart to leave digital footprints. Marcus was a tech-savvy executive; he reviewed monthly cloud backups. But a faulty network router in an eighteen-thousand-square-foot estate was a completely believable excuse.
Still, the uneasiness lingered.
Victoria slipped out of the master bathroom and walked silently down the carpeted hallway toward the north wing. She stopped outside Maya’s bedroom door.
The room was supposed to be a princess’s sanctuary. When Elena was alive, it had been painted a warm, soothing buttercup yellow, filled with handcrafted wooden bookshelves, plush stuffed animals, and framed family photographs. But over the last six months, Victoria had systematically dismantled Elena’s presence. She had convinced Marcus that Maya was "outgrowing" her babyish things and needed a more "structured, minimalist environment" to foster discipline and emotional maturity.
Now, the room was cold, sterile, and bare.
Victoria pushed the door open without knocking.
Maya was sitting on the edge of her small twin mattress, clad in thin cotton pajamas that were visibly two sizes too small for her. She was trying to brush her own hair with a plastic comb, but her arms were trembling with fatigue, and the plastic teeth were snagging in the stubborn tangles.
At the sound of the door opening, Maya flinched violently, dropping the comb onto the bare hardwood floor. She scrambled backward against the headboard, tucking her bare feet under the thin quilt, her hazel eyes widening in pure terror.
"V-Victoria..." Maya stammered, pulling the blanket up to her chin. "I... I brushed my teeth. I did all my reading. I'm going to sleep now. I promise."
Victoria walked into the room with slow, predatory grace. She picked up the dropped plastic comb from the floor, twirling it between her fingers, before tossing it onto the empty wooden desk.
"You look terrible, Maya," Victoria said softly, leaning against the bedpost. Her voice sounded almost caring, an artificial sweetness that curdled the air. "Look at your hair. Look at the bags under your eyes. Do you know what people would say if they saw you like this? They would say that your father is neglecting you. They would say that Marcus Oleso doesn't know how to raise his own daughter."
"No... Papa is good! Papa loves me!" Maya cried, tears instantly pooling in her eyes.
"Does he?" Victoria tilted her head, her smile cold and mocking. "If he loved you so much, why is he always on the other side of the planet? Why did he leave you here with me? He's tired of you, Maya. He looks at you and all he sees is your mother. All he sees is sickness, sadness, and medical bills. He gave me complete authority to turn you into a respectable young lady, but you... you act like an untamed animal."
Maya began to weep silently, burying her face into her knees. Her small shoulders shook with the quiet, broken sobs of a child who had been systematically convinced that her very existence was a burden to the only person she had left in the world.
Victoria reached out, her fingers closing firmly around Maya’s delicate chin. She forced the little girl’s head up, digging her sharp acrylic nails slightly into the soft skin of Maya’s jawline until Maya gasped in pain.
"Listen to me very carefully," Victoria hissed, dropping the sweet facade entirely, her face inches from Maya’s. "Teresa has been looking at you with pity all night. Did you complain to her? Did you whine about your dinner?"
"N-no! I didn't! I swear!"
"Good. Because Teresa is an employee. A maid. If she causes trouble in this house, I will have her fired by tomorrow morning. I will call the police and tell them she stole my diamond earrings, and she will be thrown into prison where her family will never see her again. Do you want that to happen to Teresa, Maya? Do you want your little tantrums to ruin that poor old woman’s life?"
"No... please, no! Don't hurt Teresa!" Maya pleaded, her voice breaking into frantic gasps. "I won't say anything! I promise! I like the rice! I won't ask for food again!"
"You see? You *can* be trained when you try," Victoria purred, releasing the child’s chin with a dismissive push that sent Maya reeling backward against the wall.
Victoria pulled a silk handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her fingers as if she had touched something filthy, and turned toward the door.
"Tomorrow, you will stay in this room until noon," Victoria instructed coldly, pausing at the threshold. "If you set foot downstairs while I am entertaining the garden club, there will be no dinner tomorrow night either. Lie down. Turn off the light."
The heavy door clicked shut. The mechanical latch slid into place.
In the suffocating darkness of the room, Maya curled into a tight, trembling ball beneath the thin sheet. Her stomach let out a hollow, agonizing growl, cramping so sharply that she had to bite her own hand to keep from screaming out into the empty house.
Through the crack of the floorboards beneath her bed, the faint smell of roasted chicken from the staff kitchen drifted upward—a cruel, tantalizing reminder of a world where other human beings were allowed to eat, to laugh, and to feel safe.
Two doors down the hall, Teresa stood in the darkened laundry room, watching through the crack in the door as Victoria returned to the master suite.
Teresa pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped it once onto a pile of folded towels before snatching it back up.
There was a new text message on the screen, sent from an encrypted satellite transponder:
*Flight airborne. Storm over Alaska. ETA 0430 Seattle. Keep Maya safe. Do not let her suspect a thing. — M.*
Teresa stared at the glowing letters on the screen, a single, hot tear rolling down her nose. Four-thirty in the morning. That was seven hours away.
May you like
Seven hours to survive in a house with a monster.
***
