Downstairs, the silence was broken by the frantic click-clack of a rotary dial. Rosa was hunched over the villa's heavy antique landline, her knuckles white.
She couldn't find her cellphone anywhere. She would find it later, but right now, it was better she called the police than waste any more time looking for her phone.
Rosa didn't even wait for the dial to finish. In a state of pure hysteria, she shrieked into the receiver before anyone had even picked up.
"Hello?! Hello?! Is someone there? God, please—there's blood! So much blood!"
When the receiver finally answered. "Is there a problem?"
The voice came from the office of the estate security.
"Hello? You have to help me. Something terrible has happened in the Col—"
"Rosa! Hang up! Hang up right now!" Rochelle lunged across the foyer, her hand slamming down on the receiver, cutting the connection before the security heard a thing.
Rosa shrieked, shoving Rochelle back. "What are you doing?! Someone's dead! There's blood everywhere! I have to tell them—"
Rochelle hissed with wild eyes. "You tell them nothing! Do you want her to go to jail for defending herself against that animal? Look at what he did to her!"
Upon hearing this for the first time, she narrowed her eyes. "Her? He—S-she killed him? She killed him. She killed him, Rochelle! I'm a witness!"
"You're a witness to abuse! Not a murder!"
Rosa narrowed her eyes, her brain refusing to admit her master was at wrong and completely wiped out memory of him being abusive. What mattered what someone was dead and she was in the same house.
The thought made her reach for the phone again, but Rochelle gripped her wrist, her nails digging in. "If the police come now, everyone in this house is finished. Think about her career! Think about—"
DING-DONG.
~♡~
"Brianna, darling. Please pass me the butter."
Senior Mrs. Colburn's voice sounded like she was at the other end of the tunnel in Brianna's ears.
Pinching her thighs under the table, she forced a smile. "Of course, Mother."
She slid the dish across the mahogany table.
The woman dug her knife into it. "You told me Lucian was still in the bath. It's been hours. That's a long time to soak."
"He's exhausted. The new drug trials at Better Health... he hasn't slept."
Senior Mrs. Colburn's face contoured into a grimace of recollection. "Mmm. Better Health. It would be a tragedy if anything happened to him now. The board is already restless. If he were to, say, have an accident... the company would fall to his family. If only there was a child."
She rubbed her butter on her sourdough, then opened her mouth to say the first thing that enters her head. "When are you guys thinking of trying again?"
Brianna tensed up immediately."... T-trying again?"
"You know what I mean."
Brianna didn't know how to say how husband was sexually irritated by her. The only time he'd ever 'done the deed' with her was to 'produce' their dead twins, not pleasure—which at the time he agreed because the Dowager made him.
The memory of the first night—the way he'd looked at her with pure revulsion and called her a disgusting whore for simply wearing a lingerie—made Brianna snap the bread crust in two. The jagged ends poked into her palms.
Over the years, she learned to take matters into her hands. Literally.
She looked Senior Mrs. Colburn dead in the eye, and lied. "Oh, we try all the time."
"You know how he is. He's... insatiable behind closed doors..."
Brianna cleared her throat and lied again. "But we decided to have children next year."
His sister's faces twist into disgust and anger, because they wanted her to be miserable and rejected just like their marriages.
In that moment, the doors of the kitchen opened. And Rosa began serving dinner. All the while she moved, she avoided looking at Brianna.
"Hmm. Isn't dinner peaceful since a certain someone isn't here? This is the first memorial dinner where I haven't felt like I'm eating in a graveyard." Victoria, Lucian's oldest sister, said bitterly.
The rest of his family nod in agreement. But Brianna didn't say anything.
Meanwhile, Senior Mrs. Colburn had taken Brianna's silence as a threat. "Brianna, dear, you look like you've seen a ghost. Don't tell me you actually miss his shouting? Enjoy the peace!"
Rosa's eyes flickered toward Brianna. There was no loyalty in that gaze, only a "witch-like" resentment. But when Brianna looked back, she saw the pure, unadulterated fear in the housekeeper's eyes.
The way they had to shove a rag into Rosa's mouth and bind her wrists with a silk scarf because the woman had been talking about reporting.
Now, pouring red wine into Brianna's glass, the woman stiffened.
"Pass the butter, Brianna. You've been staring at that wine for five minutes. Is there a fly in it, or are you just daydreaming again?"
As Brianna grudgingly pushed the silver dish toward Victoria, Rosa cowered. The bottle she had been holding rattled in her hands and spilled over Brianna's dress.
Senior Mrs. Colburn snapped. "Rosa, for heaven's sake, can't you do anything right? See the mess you just made."
A napkin was handed to Brianna, whose dab was useless against the stain.
"And take this steak back. It's bleeding all over the porcelain. I won't have it."
Bleeding.
The word hit Brianna. The two milligrams of Lorazepam she'd swallowed in the bathroom were finally losing their grip.
The red wine on her lap wasn't looking like alcohol anymore, making her drop the napkin.
The reality of what she and Rochelle had done, they had no idea. They didn't see her and Rochelle dragging Lucian's heavy, unconscious body up the servant's stairs forty minutes ago.
To make matters worse, Lucian wasn't dead when they went there. But if he died in his bathtub while she was downstairs pretending everything was fine, she was a murderer!
Brianna started. "I..."
Victoria's voice trailed her off. "Brianna? You're shaking the table."
Brianna looked down. Her hands were vibrating so hard the silver butter knife was rattling against the mahogany like a death knell.
"I have to... check on him," Brianna whispered, pushing her chair back so violently it screeched against the floor.
Upstairs, the silence of the master suite was deafening.
She entered into the room and headed straight for the bathroom. She grabbed the edge of the shower curtain, yanking it open with force that made the rings shrieked against the metal rod.
Lucian lay exactly where they had left him.
Brianna dropped to her knees on the cold tile, her dress billowing around her. She looked away for a second, a sob catching in her throat, before forcing herself to look back. He was terrifyingly still.
"Lucian..."
She reached out. Her fingers were shaking so violently she had to pin her hand against his collarbone to steady it. She pressed her index and middle fingers into the hollow of his neck, searching for the carotid.
Nothing.
She pressed harder, her own pulse drumming so loud in her ears it was hard to tell whose heart she was hearing.
Her voice dropped to a jagged whisper. "Don't do this."
She grabbed his shoulders and gave him a desperate shake. "Lucian! Wake up and sign the papers! Wake up and hate me! Just... breathe, you arrogant bastard! Breathe!"