Chapter 5 - Shadows in the Garden
Three days passed in a blur of quiet domesticity that felt entirely too fragile to last.
Toby spent his mornings sitting by the tall bay window of the carriage house, watching the estate gardeners trim the boxwood hedges while listening to audiobooks through his new devices. His speech was already improving, growing clearer and more confident as he practiced words he had only ever read on paper before.
Sadie continued her duties at Malvern House, though her interactions with the other staff had fundamentally shifted. The whispered gossip about her sudden promotion to the carriage house was palpable, but nobody dared cross her—not when Gideon Voss personally escorted her to the main kitchens every morning.
On the fourth night, a thick autumn fog rolled in off Boston Harbor, swallowing the perimeter iron gates and casting ghostly silhouettes across the sprawling lawns.
Sadie was in the carriage house kitchen preparing a pot of vegetable soup when she heard a faint, unnatural sound from the back garden—the dull crunch of gravel beneath a shoe.
She froze, the wooden spoon suspended over the pot.
Crunch.
Again.
Toby was asleep upstairs in his new bedroom, exhausted from a full day of practicing his letters with a tutor Gideon had quietly arranged.
Sadie crept toward the back door, her heart hammering against her ribs. She flipped off the kitchen light so she could see through the small glass pane in the upper half of the door without being seen.
Out in the dense fog, standing near the edge of the stone patio, were two figures.
They weren't estate guards. Estate guards wore standard-issue charcoal coats and patrolled in pairs with encrypted radios. These men wore dark hoodies, their faces half-hidden in shadow, one of them holding a heavy iron crowbar.
They were testing the latch on the French doors leading into the carriage house sitting room.
Panic surged through Sadie’s veins. She didn't think; she reacted. She grabbed her phone from the counter, dialed the only emergency number etched into her memory, and pressed send before the first ring could even finish.
The line connected instantly.
“Malvern,” a deep, cool voice answered on the first ring.
“Mr. Malvern—there are men outside,” Sadie whispered, her voice shaking violently. “At the carriage house. They’re trying the back door.”
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On the other end of the line, there was no hesitation, no request for clarification. Just a sharp, metallic click as a slide was racked on a firearm.
“Stay in the kitchen, Sadie,” Ezra commanded, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy calm that belonged to a predator. “Do not open the door. Do not make a sound. I am already on my way.”
