THE HOUSEKEEPER

“This is unacceptable.” The delivery driver took a step back. Julian Blackwood put down his pen. He had been looking through a pile of quarterly reports that he no longer cared about. Now, he was listening to a woman's angry voice coming from two floors below. Her voice was sharp. It sounded like someone who had lost her patience a long time ago and was now speaking out of pure anger. “Unacceptable?” the woman replied. “You brought bruised tomatoes for a man who complains when his eggs are even slightly wrong. Do you want to explain that to him, or should I?” Julian stood up from his desk without even thinking about it. He told himself it was because of the noise. It was eleven in the morning, and someone was shouting in his courtyard as if they were in a busy market. He walked to the window. Two floors below, beside the building's private entrance, stood his housekeeper. She was small, with dark hair, and her hands were firmly on her hips. She looked ready for a fight, and from the look on her face, she planned to win. She pointed at a crate of vegetables as if the vegetables had personally offended her. “I’m not accepting this,” she said. Even from where he stood, and even through the glass, Julian could hear how steady her voice was. She wasn't apologizing. She wasn't nervous. She wasn't doing any of the things people normally did when they thought Julian Blackwood might hear them complaining. The driver muttered something under his breath and started carrying the crate back to his truck. She had won. Julian watched as she placed her hands on her hips again. She blew a loose strand of hair away from her face and turned toward the building. She looked pleased, like a woman who had just gotten exactly what she wanted. He should have gone back to his desk. He didn't. There was something about the way she moved that caught his attention. She was quick and natural. She wasn't trying to impress anyone. Most people who worked for him changed the moment they thought he was watching. Their voices became softer. Their movements became more careful. They put on that blank, polite expression people often wore when dealing with a rich man's mood. But Zoe Hart didn't know she was being watched. And it showed. She kicked the alley door shut with her heel. Her arms were full, and her hair had come loose from its bun. She muttered something under her breath. Julian was almost certain she was talking about him. For one short moment, he almost smiled. Then he stopped himself. Don't. He had made that mistake before. He had noticed a woman's hands, her voice, or the stubborn look on her face and thought his curiosity meant something more. It never ended well. Sometimes it ended with lawyers. Other times, it ended with newspapers writing stories about him. And sometimes it ended with a woman sitting across from him at dinner, pretending to care while secretly thinking about his money. Julian turned away from the window and sat back down. But the numbers on the page no longer made sense to him. An hour later, Zoe brought his lunch upstairs. She knocked twice. She always knocked twice, almost as if she was challenging the door to answer her. Then she walked in without waiting for permission and placed the tray on his desk a little harder than necessary. “Chicken,” she said. “Not too salty. I checked it four times.” “I didn't ask you to check it four times.” “No,” she replied, standing straight. “But you complained the last three times I didn't.” Julian looked up from his laptop. She was wearing her black uniform, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. There was a small mark of flour on her collarbone, but she clearly didn't know it was there. She looked at him as if she was daring him to find something wrong. Julian found himself wanting to. Not because there was anything wrong with the chicken. He wanted to say something because he wasn't sure what would happen if he didn't. If he allowed the moment to pass without an argument, he didn't know what would fill the silence between them. “The towels in the guest bathroom,” he said instead, “were folded wrongly this morning.” Something changed on her face. It wasn't exactly hurt. It was more like she had suddenly closed a door. “Wrong?” she repeated. “The Blackwood fold is in thirds, not halves. I've told you this.” “You've told me a lot of things, Mr. Blackwood.” She picked up the empty glass from his desk. The way she held it was almost rough. “I'll fold your towels in perfect thirds from now on. Wouldn't want our guests judging us because of our towel-folding skills.” She left before he could answer. The door closed behind her with a soft click. For some reason, that quiet sound felt louder than a slam. Julian remained in his chair and stared at the closed door for a long moment. Eight months. Eight months, and she still looked at him as if he were something she had accidentally stepped on. He told himself it didn't matter. He told himself many things that afternoon. He went through his calls and reports like he always did, trying to focus on work. But none of it stopped him from remembering her eyes. Three different times, he found himself thinking about the exact color of her eyes when she was angry. Hazel. But when she was angry, they became a deep golden color, almost as if there was a light shining inside them. That evening, Julian sat alone in his study with a glass of scotch. He barely drank any of it. His phone suddenly buzzed. It was Marcus Webb, the head of security. He was texting Julian about a change in the schedule for the following week. Julian typed a short reply and placed his phone back on the desk. He didn't think much about it. He had no reason to think about Marcus. Not yet. He had no idea that somewhere below him, in a stairwell that smelled of bleach and old carpet, his housekeeper was bending down to pick up a flash drive. Someone much more dangerous than either of them had dropped it there. And that person had not yet realized it was missing.

Zoe's POV “He said the towels were folded wrong.” Elena almost choked on her coffee. “Wrong?” “In halves. Like some kind of crime.” Zoe dropped onto the stairwell step beside her and pulled off her apron. She untied it harder than she needed to, still annoyed about what had happened upstairs. “Eight months, Elena. Eight whole months of thirds and quarters and ‘the sheets need to be tucked at a forty-five-degree angle.’ And do you know what he has never said to me?” Elena took another sip of her coffee. “Let me guess.” “Thank you.” Zoe lifted one finger before Elena could say anything else. “Not once. Not for the meals I cook. Not for the dry cleaning I take all the way across town. Not even for the time I got his goddaughter to stop screaming during the worst tantrum ever while he hid in his study like a coward.” Elena laughed. It was a low, warm laugh. It was the kind of laugh that had helped Zoe survive her first scary month in the Blackwood apartment. Back then, Zoe had not know