Emery’s POV
Harmony becomes my bridge to a world I never knew existed.
Over the next week, I watch her move through the estate with an ease I could never manage. While I was always treated as an outsider—doors closing as I approached, conversations dying mid-sentence—Harmony slips through the invisible barriers like water through stone.
"Maria in the kitchen grew up three towns over from where I did," she tells me one afternoon, settling into the armchair across from mine in our private sitting room. "Small world. Her grandmother and mine used to sell vegetables at the same market."
I set down my tea, studying her face. "That's quite a coincidence."
"Is it?" She shrugs, a small smile playing at her lips. "Or maybe people just talk to me because I actually ask about their lives."
The observation stings, but she's not wrong. In all my time here, I never learned the housekeeper's first name. Never asked the groundskeeper about his family. I was too busy surviving to notice the people who keep this house running.
"What else have you learned?" I ask carefully.
Harmony's expression shifts—something guarded entering her eyes. "Are you sure you want to know?"
"I need to know."
She nods slowly, then begins.
The information comes in pieces over the following days. Harmony reports back after each interaction—never pushing, never forcing, letting me absorb the details at my own pace.
"Thomas has worked the gardens for thirty-two years," she says one evening while I nurse Elsie. "He remembers when you could walk through the entire estate without restriction. Now half the grounds are off-limits. Security reasons, they say."
"What happened?"
"He's not sure. Something about fifteen years ago. Several longtime employees left all at once." She pauses, choosing her words carefully. "The ones who stayed got significant raises. The ones who left got... packages."
"Severance?"
"Generous severance." Her tone makes the word sound like something else entirely. "The kind that comes with paperwork. Legal paperwork. The kind you sign when someone wants to make sure you never talk about what you saw."
I feel the blood drain from my face. "Did Thomas say what they saw?"
"He doesn't know. Or he won't say." She meets my eyes. "But he remembers the names. Wrote them down for me, actually. In case I was curious."
She pulls a folded piece of paper from her pocket and hands it to me. Five names, written in careful script. Five people who left this house and never came back.
The picture grows darker with each conversation.
"Elena used to clean the east wing," Harmony tells me two days later. We're in the nursery, Elsie asleep in her crib while rain streaks the windows. "She mentioned a woman named Bailey. Portia's personal assistant, years ago."
I lean forward. "What about her?"
"She was good at her job. Efficient. Trustworthy. Worked directly with Mrs. Remington Senior for almost a decade." Harmony's voice drops. "Then one day she started asking questions about financial transfers. Large sums moving through accounts she'd never seen before."
"What kind of accounts?"
"Elena doesn't know. All she remembers is that Bailey was there on a Monday, and by Friday, she was gone. No goodbye party. No forwarding address. Just a severance check and a one-way ticket out of the Remington orbit."
I process this, my mind racing through implications I'm not sure I want to understand. "Did anyone ever hear from her again?"
"Elena tried to call her once. The number was disconnected." Harmony pauses. "The next week, Elena got a raise. She stopped asking questions."
None of it is proof.
I repeat this to myself as the information accumulates, each piece adding to a picture I can't quite see. Staff who vanished. Questions that led to terminations. Financial irregularities buried under layers of legal agreements and generous payoffs.
And then there's the sealed wing.
"The west corridor," Harmony says one afternoon, her voice barely above a whisper. "Marcus—one of the security guards—mentioned it when I brought him coffee. Said it's been closed since before he started working here."
"Closed, why?"
"Renovations, supposedly. But he's never seen any construction crews." She shakes her head. "He did see Mrs. Remington Senior go in once, late at night. When he asked about it the next day, she looked at him like he'd committed a crime. He never mentioned it again."
I think about the estate's layout—the corridors I've walked, the rooms I've entered. I've never even noticed a sealed wing. Never thought to question why certain doors remained permanently closed.
"What do you think is in there?" I ask.
"I don't know." Harmony's eyes meet mine. "But I know that people who ask too many questions in this house tend to disappear."
The pattern crystallizes in my mind like ice forming on glass.
Portia's control isn't just social. It isn't just about manipulation and whisper campaigns and carefully orchestrated humiliation. It's structural. Built into the very foundation of this house, enforced through fear and silence and the understanding that some things must never be spoken aloud.
She doesn't just control what people say about her. She controls what they're allowed to remember.
"Emery." Harmony's voice pulls me back to the present. She's watching me carefully, Elsie now cradled against her chest, my daughter's face peaceful in sleep. "What are you going to do with all this?"
I stare out the window at the grounds below—the manicured gardens, the security cameras disguised as decorative fixtures, the walls that have witnessed decades of secrets.
"I don't know yet," I admit. The truth feels like a weight I'm not sure how to carry. "I don't have enough. Everything you've told me—it's whispers. Patterns. Nothing concrete."
"Patterns can become proof," she says quietly. "If you know where to look."
"And if I look, what then?" I turn to face her. "If I find something real, something that could hurt her—what do I do with it? Use it as leverage? Expose her? Burn this whole family to the ground?"
Harmony doesn't answer. She just holds my daughter against her heart, waiting for me to find my own way through.
I watch Elsie sleep, her tiny chest rising and falling, her face unmarked by any of the darkness swirling around her. She deserves better than this. Better than a family built on secrets and control. Better than a grandmother who weaponizes everything she touches.
"I need to think," I say finally. "I need time to figure out what this means."
Harmony nods. "Take all the time you need. I'm not going anywhere."
For the first time since I walked back through those gates, I feel something shift inside me. Not hope—not yet. But something adjacent to it. The beginning of possibility.
I'm not alone anymore.
I have an ally. I have information. And somewhere in the foundations of this house, buried beneath decades of carefully maintained silence, I have the beginning of a weapon.
What I choose to do with it... that's a decision for another day.