Chapter 80: Why Was He Uncomfortable?

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Why Was He Uncomfortable?

Garrett sat on the edge of the bed for a long while after the door clicked shut behind her, the quiet of the guest room settling back in around him, heavier now than it had been that morning.

He wanted her. That much wasn’t in question, hadn’t been in question since long before today. Nothing about how he felt toward Emiliana had changed in the last hour. So why had everything in him locked up the second things had actually started moving somewhere real between them?

He turned it over slowly, trying to actually locate the source of it instead of just sitting with the vague discomfort.

It wasn’t her. He was sure enough of that.

It was the house.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the whole time, some part of him had stayed aware of exactly where he was. Security cameras he’d noticed without really registering, tucked into corners of hallways he’d walked through yesterday. The quiet, constant sense that everything around him, the walls, the furniture, the very air in the room, belonged to a family that wasn’t his, in a house built for people whose lives operated on rules he didn’t fully understand yet.

He hadn’t been able to shake that. Not enough to actually let go the way the moment had needed him to.

Garrett didn’t land on anything more definite than that, no clean explanation solid enough to hand Emiliana later as an apology that would actually make sense to her. Just an itch under his skin that hadn’t gone away, restless enough that sitting in this room any longer wasn’t going to fix it.

He got up, grabbed his jacket, and decided a walk might do more good than staring at the same four walls waiting for the discomfort to pass on its own.

He left the guest room and started walking without much of a plan, taking turns that hadn’t been part of Emiliana’s tour, letting curiosity guide him more than any actual destination.

The mansion shifted the further he went. The grand, open spaces from yesterday, the high ceilings and deliberate artwork, gave way gradually to something more functional, narrower corridors that clearly existed for the house to actually run rather than to be admired. He passed a doorway where a staff member disappeared through with an armful of linens, the door swinging shut behind her onto what looked like a much plainer service corridor, utilitarian in a way the rest of the house wasn’t.

Further along, an elevator sat tucked into an alcove, unremarkable except for the small keycard reader mounted beside it instead of a simple call button. Garrett noticed it without breaking stride.

A camera sat mounted near the ceiling at the next junction, angled to cover the corridor in both directions, more deliberate than the general security presence he’d noticed elsewhere in the house.

The photographs on the walls changed too, the modern, carefully curated art from the main halls giving way to older portraits, formally posed, generations of Vane faces staring out from ornate frames, some of the photographs clearly decades old, the fashion and the grain of the images placing them well before Emiliana’s time.

The corridor eventually widened again, leading toward what looked like a more private section of the property entirely, the architecture shifting subtly, heavier doors, thicker walls, the kind of construction that suggested more than aesthetic consideration had gone into building it.

Garrett noticed the staff treated this part of the house differently too. A man in a suit rather than the usual household uniform passed him without so much as a glance, moving with purpose toward somewhere further down the hall. Nobody stopped to ask if he needed anything the way Margaret or Nancy might have elsewhere. If anything, the quiet here felt more deliberate, more watched, than anywhere else he’d walked through so far.

Nothing about it was overtly suspicious. Just different, enough that his curiosity sharpened the longer he walked.

He made it another twenty feet before a man stepped into view from an alcove near a set of heavy double doors, dressed in a dark suit that made no attempt to blend in as regular household staff.

"Can I help you, sir?"

Garrett stopped. "Just looking around."

"This area isn’t accessible to guests." The man’s tone stayed polite, though there was nothing flexible underneath it. "I’ll need to ask you to head back the way you came."

"I was actually looking for Emiliana," Garrett said, keeping his own tone easy. "She mentioned I should come this way."

The guard studied him for a second, then reached for a small radio clipped to his jacket, murmuring something too quiet for Garrett to catch. A moment later, he nodded slightly, apparently getting confirmation of something.

"Miss Vane did inform the household that you’d be staying with us," he said. "But this section remains restricted regardless. I’m sure you understand."

Garrett didn’t push it. Whatever this was, forcing his way past a man built like a doorway wasn’t going to get him anywhere useful, and he had no actual reason yet to justify making an issue out of it.

"Sure," he said, already turning to head back the way he’d come. "No problem."

He got a few steps before something down the corridor caught his eye, past the guard’s shoulder, at the far end of the hallway.

A door, larger and more imposing than anything else he’d seen in the house so far, dark wood reinforced with something that looked distinctly heavier than decoration. A small emblem sat carved into its surface near the top, the same Vane crest he’d seen elsewhere in the mansion, though rendered here with more weight, more deliberate presence than the decorative versions scattered through the main halls.

It looked less like part of the house and more like something designed to keep people away.

Garrett didn’t ask about it. Didn’t let his attention linger long enough for the guard to notice.

He just filed the image away, quiet and deliberate, and continued back down the corridor the way he’d come.

Whatever was behind that door, Garrett had a feeling he’d be seeing it again.