I did not confront her immediately.
The gate closed behind my car with a dull metallic finality, the kind of sound that always felt heavier than it should. The compound was quiet, too quiet, the afternoon air thick with the kind of stillness that made every movement feel deliberate. When I stepped out, my legs were slow, my palms cold despite the heat. The house stood ahead of me, my home, my supposed place of safety, yet it felt foreign, as if something inside it had shifted without my permission.
I had seen them.
From a distance, from behind the steering wheel, through the half-open front door: Mrs. Alexander and my maid standing close, talking in low tones. Not arguing. Not greeting. Talking in the way people did when they believed no one was watching.
They had not seen me.
That, more than anything else, was what stayed with me as I walked toward the house. If they had seen me, they would have changed their expressions. They would have rearranged their faces into politeness, into harmlessness. But I had seen the moment before the mask. And now, every step I took felt like walking into a room where the furniture had been rearranged while I was away.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of cleaning products and something warm simmering in the kitchen. It was familiar, domestic. Almost comforting.
Almost.
She was there when I entered, Britney, my maid, moving with that same quiet efficiency she always had. Neat uniform. Downcast eyes. Soft voice.
"Welcome back, madam," she said.
I studied her face, looking for something I could not name. Guilt. Alarm. Recognition. But she met my eyes calmly, as if nothing in the world had shifted.
I forced my expression into something neutral. "Has anyone been here today?"
She shook her head without hesitation. "No, madam."
No pause. No uncertainty.
The word landed heavier than it should have.
I moved past her, letting my bag slide from my shoulder onto the console table. My fingers felt stiff, as if they did not quite belong to me. I wanted to ask her directly. I wanted to say, I saw you. I wanted to tear through the thin layer of normalcy she was offering and see what lay beneath it.
But instinct stopped me.
Whatever this was, it was not something I could rush into. I had already learned, over and over again, that the things hunting us did not come with clear warnings. They hid in polite smiles, in carefully chosen words, in people who looked ordinary enough to blend into the background.
So instead, I asked casually, "No visitors at all? No one checking in or asking about me?"
Her eyes flickered for half a second. Just half.
"No, madam," she repeated.
There it was.
Not enough to accuse. Not enough to prove. Just enough to make my skin prickle.
I nodded, as though satisfied. "All right."
She went back to what she had been doing, and I walked upstairs slowly, every step measured, my heartbeat too loud in my ears. When I closed the bedroom door behind me, the silence pressed in.
I took out my phone and called Amanda.
She answered almost immediately, as if she had been waiting.
"She was with Mrs. Alexander," I said without preamble. "I saw them coming out of the house together."
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
Amanda exhaled. "All right. Don't do anything yet. Don't confront her. I'll be back tomorrow. We need to understand how she's connected to them before we make any move."
I leaned against the wall, staring at nothing. "Everything keeps pointing back to the Alexanders."
"Yes," Amanda said quietly. "But we still don't know how deep it goes. Or who else is involved."
After we ended the call, I stood there for a long time, listening to the faint sounds of movement below. Every small noise seemed amplified: the clink of cutlery, the soft hum of the refrigerator, the distant murmur of traffic outside the estate.
My home no longer felt like a refuge.
That night, I did not eat.
Britney prepared dinner as usual. She brought the tray into the room with the same composed politeness, placed it on the small table near the window, and asked if there was anything else I needed.
I smiled faintly. "No. Thank you."
She left, closing the door behind her.
I waited.
The food sat there, untouched, steam slowly fading into the air. When I was certain no one was nearby, I carried the tray into the bathroom and tipped its contents into a plastic bag I had hidden earlier. My hands shook slightly as I worked, a cold certainty settling in my chest.
I did not know what I was afraid of. I only knew that I no longer trusted what came from her hands.
Later, when I returned to the bedroom, I found her standing in the doorway. I was shocked
I had not heard her approach.
Her gaze dropped briefly to the empty table, then lifted back to my face.
"You didn't eat, madam."
"I wasn't hungry."
For a moment, something dark flickered behind her eyes. Not anger exactly. Not disappointment. Something sharper.
It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.
"Of course," she said.
But when she turned to leave, I saw it again, something coiled, something restrained. The expression of someone who had been denied something they expected.
I did not sleep that night.
The following morning, Amanda returned.
The relief I felt when I saw her was almost painful. For the first time in days, I did not feel entirely alone in my fear. We sat together in the sitting room, speaking in low voices, careful even within our own walls.
"She's acting more than suspicious," I told her. "She knows when I avoid the food. She watches me."
Amanda nodded. "Which means she knows you're onto something."
"I don't know who she really is," I whispered. "But she's not here by accident."
Amanda was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "If we want the truth, we're going to have to stop guessing."
That was when she mentioned Pepe.
Our tech investigator. The one person we trusted to operate in the shadows without leaving traces.
"We wiretap her phone," Amanda said. "We listen. We find out who she's talking to."
A cold wave of fear washed through me. "That's dangerous."
"So is doing nothing."
She was right.
By evening, the plan was in motion.
Amanda and I left the house under the pretense of running errands, but we did not go far. From the car, we accessed the CCTV feed, watching the interior of the house in real time. The familiarity of my own living room on the small screen felt unsettling, as if I were spying on myself.
Inside, Britney moved through the house with her usual calm efficiency. Then she stopped in the kitchen.
Her phone was in her hand.
She leaned against the counter, her posture relaxed, but her voice, what little we could hear, was low and purposeful. Not casual. Not friendly.
It sounded like someone reporting in.
My stomach twisted.
"That's not how someone talks to a friend," I murmured.
Amanda didn't respond. She was already on the phone with Pepe.
He sent the link, a small, inconspicuous message designed to plant the bug if clicked.
We watched.
The notification appeared on Britney's phone. She glanced at it. Her eyes narrowed.
She did not click it.
She deleted it.
My breath caught in my throat.
Pepe's voice came through Amanda's phone a moment later. "She didn't open it. She's cautious. Too cautious."
Amanda closed her eyes briefly. "So we do it ourselves."
We returned home.
Britney was in the kitchen, preparing dinner as if nothing had happened. The normalcy of the scene felt almost surreal.
"We don't want dinner tonight," Amanda said casually. "We ordered something from outside."
Britney looked up. "I can still prepare something light."
"No," I said. "The food will be delivered to the estate gate. We don't want strangers coming all the way into the compound."
She hesitated. Then nodded. "I will go and pick it up."
As she reached for her phone, Amanda spoke, "Wait. Can I use your phone for a moment? My network has been acting strange."
For a split second, I thought Britney would refuse.
She studied Amanda's face, something calculating passing through her eyes. Then she handed over the phone.
"Of course."
She left.
The moment the door closed behind her, the air in the room shifted.
We moved quickly.
The phone was cold in my hands. I scrolled through it, my unease growing with every second.
There were no messages.
No saved contacts.
Just numbers.
Long strings of digits, repeated over and over in the call log. When we tried calling them back, none connected. It was as if the phone existed only to reach people who did not want to be traced.
"This isn't normal," I whispered.
"No," Amanda agreed. "Not for someone who claims to be… nothing."
She called Pepe. He sent the link again.
Amanda clicked it.
The confirmation was silent, invisible. Nothing changed on the screen. But we knew it was done.
As Amanda was about to hand the phone back, she froze.
Her eyes were fixed on the call log.
"What is it?" I asked.
She didn't answer immediately. Her face had gone pale.
Then she turned the screen toward me.
I saw the number.
At first, it was just another string of digits. But then I saw the way Amanda's hand trembled.
"That's my sister's number," she whispered.
The words did not make sense at first.
"Your… sister?" I repeated.
She nodded slowly. "The same number that sent the messages. The same one I recognized. She just spoke to this number."
My heart began to pound. "But… it's not saved."
"No," Amanda said. "It's not."
We stared at the phone, the reality of it sinking in.
This was not coincidence.
This was not misunderstanding.
Britney was in contact with the same number that had been haunting Amanda, the number tied to her sister, to the past we had been trying to uncover, to everything that had been unraveling our lives.
Amanda lowered the phone as if it had burned her.
"She's working with them," she said hoarsely. "Whoever they are. Whoever is behind all of this."