Chapter 5 - The Broken Melody
Two weeks passed within the limestone walls of Blackwood Manor.
The forty-thousand-dollar signing bonus cleared into Natalie’s bank account within twenty-four hours.
Grace’s tuition was officially stamped PAID IN FULL.
Their mother’s lingering medical debts were wiped clean with three automated wire transfers.
Yet with every passing day, Natalie realized that the wealth inside this estate was bought with an agonizing price of isolation.
Ava did not like the main dining hall.
The high, cavernous ceiling created an echo that rattled her inner ears.
So, Natalie established an alternative routine.
Every morning at eight o'clock, they met in the library’s lower alcove.
Natalie brought textured cards, weighted sensory blankets, and a series of specialized watercolor pads.
Ava loved watercolors.
The quiet, wet glide of the brush across heavy paper produced no grating friction, no jarring clicks.
On a rainy Tuesday morning, Ava was painting a series of broad blue strokes across a clean sheet.
Natalie sat beside her on a plush floor cushion, reading a history book in comfortable silence.
Suddenly, Ava’s brush paused over the paper.
She tilted her head, listening.
“Music,” Ava murmured.
Natalie looked up from her book.
The manor was dead silent, save for the soft patter of rain against the leaded glass windows.
“I don’t hear anything, Ava. Is it coming from outside?”
Ava shook her head violently.
“The small piano. In the wall.”
Natalie frowned.
She closed her book, stood up, and approached the eastern wall of the library.
There was nothing there except heavy oak bookshelves loaded with leather-bound legal texts and shipping registers.
Ava dropped her brush, scrambled to her feet, and ran to the corner where two tall bookcases met at a ninety-degree angle.
She pressed her ear flat against the dark wood.
“It’s clicking,” Ava insisted, her blue eyes wide.
“Like Mommy’s box.”
Natalie knelt beside her, pressing her own ear against the seam between the bookcases.
For three seconds, there was only the hum of the central heating.
Then, Natalie heard it.
A faint, rhythmic, mechanical click.
Tick. Pause. Tick-tick.
It wasn’t a clock.
The interval was erratic.
Natalie’s heart began to race.
She remembered Damian’s words about the previous caregiver who had planted a tracking beacon.
Natalie ran her fingers along the underside of the oak shelf, feeling the ornate molding.
Near the baseboard, hidden behind an antique collection of maritime law volumes, her fingers brushed against an unnatural seam in the wood.
She pulled the books away.
Mounted behind the hollowed baseboard was a compact, matte-grey electronic unit with a blinking amber diode.
It was hardwired directly into the manor’s internal intercom conduit.
A high-gain listening device.
Ava reached out to touch the blinking light.
“No! Ava, don’t touch that,” Natalie said sharply, catching the girl’s hand gently.
Ava flinched at the sharpness in Natalie’s voice.
Her lip trembled.
“Did I do bad?”
Natalie instantly softened her expression, pulling Ava into a warm embrace.
“No, sweetie. You did amazing. You have the best ears in the entire world.”
Natalie stood up, her mind racing.
Protocol dictated that she immediately notify Marcus or Mrs. Gable.
But who had access to the master library to run hardwired surveillance into the walls?
Mrs. Gable managed every master key.
Marcus controlled the external security perimeter.
Julian was locked in a cabin two hundred miles away.
Natalie pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the private eight-digit number embossed on Damian’s black card.
The call connected on the second ring.
“Carter,” Damian answered, his voice backgrounded by the roar of industrial machinery.
“Mr. DeLuca, you need to come to the library immediately.”
“I’m at the rail terminal in Gary. What happened? Is Ava having a crisis?”
“No,” Natalie said, keeping her voice as low as possible.
“Ava found a listening device spliced into the library intercom conduit.”
Dead silence over the phone line.
The background machinery seemed to fade into nothingness.
“Touch nothing,” Damian ordered, his tone chillingly level.
“Take Ava to the panic room behind my master closet. Lock the deadbolt from the inside.”
May you like
“Mr. DeLuca—”
“Do it now, Natalie. I’m on my way.”
