Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the West Wing
The door to our grand suite clicked shut behind Julian as he left to attend an emergency board meeting in downtown Boston, leaving me alone in a room that felt less like a bedroom and more like a high-security prison cell disguised in silk and velvet.
I paced the Persian rug, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
A prenuptial trap. A secret child. A mother-in-law running a domestic CIA operation with binders of candidates. And a husband who, despite his tearful protestations of love, had actively participated in locking me into this gilded nightmare.
I couldn't just walk out. If I left, I would lose everything—not that I cared about the Ashford fortune, but the thought of being legally barred from ever seeing Noah, or being crushed by their legal machinery, made my stomach turn. They had planned this down to the millimeter. They had anticipated every reaction, every flash of anger, every impulse to run.
Except for one thing.
They didn't know how stubborn I could be when backed into a corner.
My eyes drifted toward the heavy oak door at the far end of the hallway—the door leading directly into the forbidden territory of the estate.
Rule One: Never enter the west wing without Julian.
Why? What was back there that required a rule, a warning, and a permanent lock?
Julian had called it "old family rooms." Eleanor had called it "private." But Noah’s words echoed in my mind: “She said we had to pick the one who looked the kindest so you wouldn't run away like the last one.”
The last one.
Noah hadn't just dreamed up a "last one." There had been another woman before me. Another wife, or fiancée, or mother to his child, who had lived in this house, tried to navigate Eleanor’s lunatic rules, and eventually disappeared.
I walked out into the hallway. The estate was terrifyingly quiet during the day. The staff moved like ghosts, wearing soft-soled shoes, gliding through the corridors with silver trays and dusters, avoiding eye contact whenever I passed.
I reached the end of the north corridor, where a heavy iron-reinforced wooden door separated the modern living quarters from the ancient west wing.
There was no key in the lock. But as I tested the brass handle out of sheer frustration, it yielded with a soft, mechanical click.
They hadn't locked it. Or rather, they assumed no one would ever dare disobey Rule One on their first day.
I slipped inside, pulling the heavy door shut behind me with a muffled thud.
The air in the west wing was instantly different—cooler, smelling faintly of old paper, dried lavender, and beeswax. The carpets here were thicker, muffling my footsteps entirely. Tall, arched stained-glass windows cast long, fractured beams of crimson and gold light across the dust-moted hallway.
It looked like a museum wing that had been sealed off decades ago. Portraits of stern-faced Ashford ancestors lined the walls, their painted eyes seeming to follow me as I moved deeper into the labyrinth.
I passed several closed doors until I reached a set of double doors carved with intricate ivy motifs. I pushed one open.
My breath caught in my throat.
It wasn't a historical archive. It was a master bedroom suite, preserved in a chilling state of suspended animation.
A king-sized bed was made up with silk linens, though a fine layer of dust coated the surface. A vanity table near the window still held silver-backed hairbrushes, an open bottle of Chanel No. 5 whose contents had long since evaporated, and a row of half-empty cosmetics. On the nightstand rested a framed photograph, face down.
With trembling fingers, I crossed the room and picked up the frame.
I turned it over.
The glass was slightly cracked. Inside was a photograph of a stunning woman with dark hair, laughing brightly while holding a toddler who looked identical to Noah. Standing beside her, smiling with a warmth I had never seen Julian direct at his mother, was Julian himself.
Her name wasn't a mystery anymore. Etched on a silver plaque beneath the photo was a name: Elena Ashford.
Elena.
Not a ghost. Not an urban legend. A real woman who had slept in this bed, laughed in this room, and mothered Julian’s child before she vanished from the Ashford estate entirely.
What happened to her? Did she die? Did she escape? Or did Eleanor’s rules break her until she had no choice but to flee, leaving her baby behind?
I set the frame down and began searching the room. I opened wardrobe doors—they were packed with designer dresses, winter coats, and shoes, as if she had simply walked out of the house one afternoon and never came back for her belongings.
Then I noticed the antique mahogany writing desk tucked into the corner bay window.
The drawers were closed, but not locked. I pulled the top drawer open. Inside lay stacks of unopened mail, unmailed letters, and a thick, leather-bound journal with a gold ribbon bookmark.
My pulse spiked. My fingers hovered over the leather cover.
Reading someone else’s private diary was an invasion of the deepest sort. But standing in this mausoleum of a room, surrounded by the erased life of the woman who came before me, I knew I was looking at a warning. A survival guide written by someone who had walked this exact path before me.
I pulled the journal out, sat down in the velvet chair by the window, and opened to the first page.
The handwriting was neat, elegant, but grew increasingly frantic as the pages turned.
“March 12,” the first entry read. “Eleanor handed me the rules today. I laughed. Julian told me not to worry. I thought it was just eccentric billionaire nonsense. I didn't understand that every rule is a shackle designed to isolate you until you have no voice left.”
I turned the pages faster, my eyes scanning the desperate ink.
“April 4. Noah asked me why I looked so sad today. I tried to smile, but I’m suffocating. Eleanor won't let me take him outside the gates without her permission. She says my mental state is unstable because I question her authority. Julian is siding with her more and more. The pressure is breaking us.”
“May 20. I found out the truth about the prenuptial agreement. It’s not a marriage contract; it’s a custody waiver. If I try to leave, I sign away all rights to my son. They trapped me.”
My breath hitched. The paper beneath my fingertips felt damp, as if tears had stained the ink decades ago.
I turned to the final entry. The handwriting was jagged, nearly illegible, scrawled across the page with terrifying urgency.
“June 15. I’m leaving tonight. I can't stay another day under this roof. If anything happens to me, if I ‘disappear’ or ‘fall ill,’ don't believe them. Look in the Ashford corporate vault. Look at the—”
The sentence cut off mid-word. A dark smudge of ink trailed off the edge of the page, as if the writer had been violently interrupted.
I sat frozen in the dim light of the west wing, the journal heavy in my lap.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
Before I could turn around, a cold, clinical voice sliced through the silence of the room.
“Rule One was established to protect you from ghosts, Ava. It seems you were determined to introduce yourself to them instead.”
May you like
I spun around.
Standing in the doorway of the bedroom, leaning casually against the frame with his arms crossed and a dark, unreadable expression in his eyes, was Julian.
