Clara didn’t sleep that night.
She sat in the small room assigned to her in the servants’ wing, replaying every sound, every word, every gesture the boy made. She had raised four of her own children and helped care for dozens more. She knew how to recognize true fear.
And Leo was terrified.
The next morning, the house seemed different. The sun illuminated the stained-glass windows, the garden was immaculate, the silence was elegant. But Leo’s eyes were swollen, and he avoided looking at the bed.
James drank black coffee for breakfast without tasting the food.
“Good morning,” Clara said gently.
Leo did not respond.
James looked up for barely a second.
“I hope you’ve rested,” he remarked in a distant tone.
Clara held his gaze.
—No, sir. He didn’t rest.
The silence grew tense.
“It’s just a phase,” James replied. “She misses her mother.”
Clara didn’t argue. But she noticed something else: when Leo passed by her chair, he instinctively put his hand to the back of his neck.
As if protecting itself.
That night, he waited.
When the mansion was once again plunged into darkness, Clara walked silently down the hallway. The clock read 1:58.
Two minutes later, the scream.
He ran towards the door, but this time he didn’t stop.
He turned the doorknob.
James was leaning over the bed.
“Sir!” exclaimed Clara.
He turned around, irritated.
—What are you doing here?
Leo was crying with his body rigid, his head barely touching the pillow.
Clara didn’t ask for permission.
She gently moved James aside and gripped the pillow firmly. Touching it, she felt something strange beneath the silk fabric. It wasn’t uniform. It wasn’t soft.
She turned it around.
A slight, irregular relief stood out beneath the cover.
James frowned.
—What are you doing?
Clara opened the side zipper.
And what fell to the ground wasn’t filler.
It was a small, flat, metal box, hidden inside.
The air became heavy.
James picked it up with trembling hands. He immediately recognized the object.
It was the old case where his wife kept her smallest jewels. After her death, he had ordered everything emptied without much investigation. The staff had rearranged the room. No one had noticed anything.
Or so I thought.
He opened the box.
Inside there was a broken bracelet… and a folded note.
The handwriting was his wife’s.
“If Leo sleeps without me, give him this when he’s scared.”
James felt the world tilting.
She remembered the night of the funeral. Leo had slept hugging that pillow. Afterward, the room was redecorated. They changed the sheets, pillowcases, and cushions. Everything had to look immaculate.
At some point, the box got stuck inside the stuffing.
Each time James pressed the child’s head against the pillow, the metal edge dug right into the base of the skull.
Real physical pain.
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