The New Maid Broke the Rules Upon Entering My Castle, but One Movement of Hers That Night Silenced Everyone

That night someone was lying in my bed, while my hand was moving toward the weapon when a woman’s warm breath froze my fingers.

The electricity had gone out several seconds earlier. Only the white light of lightning entering through the window changed the darkness in the room. On my left side, at the edge of the blanket, Emma was lying and holding my hand with both hands. Her work apron still smelled of chlorine and lemon.

“Emma?” I barely managed to say.

The woman did not open her eyes.

“Don’t move, Danny.”

“What are you doing in my bedroom?”

“I was protecting you.”

The answer was so calm that it frightened me more than a scream.

“From whom?”

This time she opened her eyes. A wet streak could be seen on her cheek, although I did not know whether it was a tear or rain. She looked toward the ceiling.

“From the man you trust the most.”

My right hand tensed on the weapon.

“You mean Luke?”

Emma sat up, but immediately clutched her side. A dark stain was spreading under the white uniform.

“He didn’t shoot me,” she told me quickly. “Not yet.”

Heavy footsteps sounded outside the room. Three steps. A pause. Then two. I knew that sound. Luke had always dragged his left foot slightly after a bullet pierced his thigh in the old warehouse.

“Get under the bed,” I whispered.

“You can’t even get up from the wheelchair and you’re still giving orders.”

“Emma!”

“Fine, fine. But if we survive tonight, I will ask for a raise.”

Her joke was inappropriate. That was exactly why it sounded convincing.

The door handle moved slowly. I took the weapon, although that phantom pain was still writhing in my legs, as if someone were turning a frozen knife inside the bone. For two years I had met this pain alone. For the first time someone was standing beside me.

Luke did not enter the room. He stopped behind the door.

“Danny, are you awake?” he asked.

Emma gripped my wrist tightly with her fingers.

“Don’t make a sound,” she told me without words.

And for the first time I thought about why she knew where I kept my medicines, why she was not afraid of me, and why she had a small copper key in her apron pocket, which she hung over her heart every night before sleep.

“Danny?” Luke called me again.

I held my breath.

A strip of light appeared under the door. Someone cautiously brought a foot into the room. Emma slid off the bed, and in her hand she held that small key. She looked toward the old clock on the wall, behind whose dial I had hidden a secret lock, the existence of which only three people knew.

Then she inserted the key into the lock and whispered to me:

“If I open this now, we will have no way back…”

The key turned all the way and a narrow drawer opened behind the clock. There was only one memory card and a folded paper inside.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“Among my mother’s things. It came today.”

Luke knocked his fist on the door.

“Danny, I need to talk to you.”

Emma hid the card in her sock and slid the paper under the mattress.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked.

She looked straight at me.

“Because I know the truth about the shooting two years ago.”

My blood froze.

“Were you there?”

“No. But my mother was.”

Luke’s voice hardened behind the door.

“Open the door, Danny. The security men are already in the corridor.”

Emma leaned toward me and added almost soundlessly:

“Mother said that the shooter repeated one name. That name lives in your house too.”

The door handle moved. I pointed the weapon toward Luke, while Emma hid by the wall.

“Hands up!” I shouted.

The door opened, but Luke was not alone. Two armed men stood behind him.

Luke did not raise a weapon at me. He only smiled.

“You realized it too late, Danny.”

At that moment the device hidden inside Emma’s sock flashed red. A hoarse woman’s voice sounded in the room, and Luke’s smile immediately disappeared…

A hoarse woman’s voice sounded in the room:

“Luke ordered the shooting. Danny was supposed to die that same evening.”

Luke froze in the doorway. The men standing behind him looked at each other, as if they were hearing for the first time whom they were serving.

Emma stepped forward. In her hand she held a small, cheap recorder whose red light was flashing.

“This is my mother’s voice,” she said. “Marina Carter was sitting in a car in the clinic parking lot that day. She saw Luke hand money and your route to the shooter.”

“You are a liar,” Luke said, but his voice no longer obeyed him.

The voice came from the recorder again:

“He told him: ‘Danny will die, and I will take his place.’”

I looked at Luke. I had known this man for ten years. He had thrown away my bloodied shirt the night I was taken to the hospital. He had squeezed my hand and told me he would find the murderer.

“It was you,” I said.

“No, Danny. I saved you.”

“You gave him my route.”

Luke took one step forward.

“You were no longer the leader. This house was already empty when you could breathe only with a machine. I preserved everything.”

“In my name.”

“In your name, with your money, and through your fear.”

Emma stood beside me. Her fingers had begun to tremble, but she held the recorder firmly.

“There is one more thing you failed to consider,” she said. “Mother sent this recording to the police too.”

Luke’s face became gray in one second.

The sound of sirens rang out in the corridor. The armed men dropped their weapons on the floor. Luke tried to escape, but two police officers were waiting for him at the door.

Only then did I notice that Emma was holding her stomach. Her face twisted from pain.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You are bleeding.”

She shook her head and said quietly to me:

“Danny, this is not only Luke’s end. Mother left a second recording too. Your name is mentioned there…”

With these words, a call came from the clinic, and the unknown man on the other end of the call told me that her mother had already been missing for more than three hours…