Chapter 2 - The Intruder In My Bed
Weeks passed.
Somehow, she became the only person in the house who didn’t tiptoe around me.
I fired nurses, screamed at cooks, and terrorized everyone else.
But Emma simply cleaned around my fury like it was another stain on the floor.
Then one Tuesday around two in the morning, phantom pain ripped through me so violently that sweat poured down my face.
Emma found me doubled over in my chair, gripping my useless thighs.
“Get out,” I hissed.
“Where are your pills?”
“I said leave.”
“Kitchen or bathroom?”
The question was so irritatingly calm that I finally snapped.
“Kitchen. Left of the sink.”
She returned with one pill and a glass of water.
When I demanded two, she glanced at the bottle and shook her head.
“It says one every six hours. You haven’t eaten, have you?”
I stared at her cracked, chemical-burned hands.
No one had refused me anything in years.
Yet this exhausted maid stood there deciding how much medication I was allowed to take.
Afterward, I started noticing things I hadn’t wanted to notice.
The way she stumbled sometimes.
How her hands shook while carrying laundry.
How she leaned against walls when she thought nobody was watching.
Then, one night, I woke suddenly in my bedroom and felt warmth against my side.
Someone was lying beside me.
My hand moved toward the weapon beneath my pillow before I looked down.
And I froze.
It was Emma.
She wasn't attacking me.
She wasn't trying to sneak into a mob boss's bed for money.
She was fully clothed in her cheap, oversized cleaning uniform.
A duster was still clutched tightly in her pale hand.
She had collapsed.
Right on the edge of my mattress, her breathing shallow and ragged.
I didn't reach for the gun.
May you like
Instead, I reached for the radio on my nightstand.
"Luke," I grunted into the receiver. "Get the estate doctor up here. Now."
