Six weeks. That was all the time I had spent working inside the Moretti estate, and it had been enough to teach me the one rule that kept people like me alive there: be invisible.
The house made it easy, in a way. Everything was white marble and gold, paintings on the walls worth more than the house my mother still lived in, and a silence so complete it felt like another member of the staff. You learned to move through it quietly. You learned not to touch anything. And above all, you learned never to give anyone a reason to notice you.
That afternoon, I broke the rule without meaning to. I was on my knees in the main hall, scrubbing a patch of marble I had already scrubbed three times. Not because it needed it. Because standing up hurt too much to bear.
My left leg had swollen underneath the thin black fabric of my uniform. A bruise spread from my knee halfway up my thigh, blooming in ugly shades of purple and blue. Every time I shifted my weight, pain shot up through my hip like an electric current. So I stayed down. Head bowed. Sponge moving in slow circles. If nobody looked at me, nobody would ask questions, and questions were the most dangerous thing in that house.
Then a voice came from behind me.
“What happened to her?”
Deep. Controlled. Calm in the way a held breath is calm.
My hand froze around the sponge.