Chapter 2 - THE PRESCRIPTION OF SILENCE
By the fourth day, I had learned the strict, mechanical rhythm of the Kretti mansion.
At 7:00 AM, Zara would unlock her door and emerge for breakfast. She wore the same style of clothing every day—simple pastel sweaters, dark skirts, and knee-high socks. She never wore bright red or dark black. Monique insisted those colors triggered memories of the crash.
During the daytime, Zara was a shadow. She attended private online tutoring sessions in the sunroom, played silently with a wooden chess set in the library, and read illustrated books about botany. She never laughed. She never threw tantrums. She spoke in sentences that rarely exceeded five words.
I didn't push her.
When she sat at the library table, I sat on the window sill nearby, sketching in my small notebook or reading my paperback. When she dropped a chess piece, I didn't rush to pick it up; I waited for her to retrieve it herself. Slowly, infinitesimally, the invisible iron fence she had built around herself began to show small gaps.
On Thursday afternoon, while Zara was in her online math lesson, Dr. Jonathan Kesler arrived at the mansion.
He was a man in his late fifties with immaculate silver hair, wearing an expensive tailored tweed blazer and soft leather loafers. He carried a leather briefcase that smelled of high-end polish and prescription medication.
I met him in the main parlor where he was reviewing Zara’s daily observation logs with Monique.
"Ah, you must be Hazel," Dr. Kesler said, offering a warm, practiced smile that didn't reach his sharp hazel eyes. "I am Dr. Kesler. Monique tells me you’ve been remarkably quiet compared to your predecessors."
"I'm learning the environment," I said, leaning against the doorframe, watching him pull three pill bottles from his briefcase.
"A sensible approach," Kesler remarked, writing notes on a tablet. "Zara’s case is delicate. Severe emotional dysregulation following acute psychological trauma. Her night-time vocalizations—the crying at nine PM—are a necessary neural release mechanism. Her brain is processing the repressed shock of her mother's death at the exact hour the accident occurred."
"The accident happened at nine PM?" I asked.
"Nine-0-four PM, to be precise," Kesler corrected, looking up over his half-moon reading glasses. "That is why her emotional release occurs at nine. It is a involuntary physiological clock."
"And the medication?" I pointed at the pill bottles.
"A specialized regimen," Kesler said smoothly. "A mild neuro-sedative combined with an anti-anxiety compound to stabilize her dopamine levels. Monique administers them at eight PM with a glass of warm milk."
I stepped closer to the table, looking at the tiny blue capsules inside the clear glass bottle.
"Has anyone tested her for night terrors?" I asked. "Or environmental triggers? I've noticed she holds her left arm very stiffly whenever the clock chimes eight."
Dr. Kesler’s warm smile faltered slightly. He slowly capped his pen and set his tablet down.
"Miss Brennan," he said, his tone softening into that infuriatingly condescending register doctors use with overly inquisitive family members. "I have held the chair of pediatric neurology at Columbia for sixteen years. I have published three textbooks on developmental trauma. You are... a nanny with a high school diploma and a history of foster placement, if I am not mistaken?"
My jaw tightened, but I kept my voice perfectly flat. "My background doesn't change the fact that an eight-year-old child shouldn't look terrified of her own bedroom."
"Her bedroom is her sanctuary," Kesler said firmly, packing his briefcase. "It contains her mother's air, her mother's memories, her mother's personal touch. Mr. Kretti spent millions replicating Victoria’s exact childhood bedroom decor inside that suite to give Zara a sense of continuity. Do not attempt to play psychologist, Miss Brennan. Stick to reading her storybooks."
He picked up his briefcase, nodded to Monique, and left the parlor.
Monique turned to me, her face cold. "You are pushing boundaries, Hazel."
"Doesn't it bother you, Monique?" I asked, looking the older woman dead in the eye. "You’ve lived in this house for ten years. You knew Victoria. You watch this little girl suffer every single night. Does it really make sense to you that a child cries at the exact same minute down to the second every night for two years?"
Monique didn't answer right away. She walked over to the marble fireplace, adjusting a vase of fresh white lilies.
"Mrs. Kretti was a complicated woman," Monique whispered, her back turned to me. "She loved Zara. But this house... this house has secrets that white marble cannot cover. If you are wise, Hazel, you will do your job, take your paycheck, and stop looking behind closed doors."
"What secrets?" I stepped closer.
Monique turned back, her black wool gloves clasped tightly over her stomach.
"The room," Monique whispered, her eyes darting toward the ceiling. "The room was never meant for Zara. It was Victoria’s private studio before she died. Mr. Kretti had it sealed and remodeled the day after the funeral."
My pulse quickened. "Why was it sealed?"
"Because," Monique said softly, "it was the last place Victoria went before she got into that car."
That evening, at 8:30 PM, I didn't sit on the hallway bench.
Instead, I slipped into the grand library on the second floor, directly beneath Zara’s bedroom suite.
The library was lined with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves, accessible by a rolling brass ladder. I climbed up to the third tier, reaching the top shelf where old estate blueprints and architectural records were stored in velvet-bound binders.
I pulled down the binder labeled: KRETTI MANSION - RECONSTRUCTION & INTERIOR RENOVATIONS (2022).
I flipped through the crisp, heavy architectural pages under the dim light of my phone flashlight.
There it was.
Third floor, West Wing.
The room currently designated as Zara’s Suite had originally been designed as an soundproof art and audio studio for Victoria Kretti, who had been a classical concert pianist before her marriage.
According to the original blue line specifications, the room was built with reinforced double-paned acoustic drywall, insulated floorboards, and a dedicated, independent ventilation shaft that ran directly down to the mansion's original basement boiler room.
I stared at the technical diagram.
A soundproof room.
If a room is soundproofed with acoustic drywall and double-paned insulation, almost no sound should escape into the hallway.
Yet, every night at 9:00 PM, Zara’s crying was loud enough to be heard clearly by the security guards standing outside in the corridor.
Unless... the sound wasn't coming from the child.
Unless the crying was being projected, magnified, or driven by something else inside that room.
My hands started trembling. I pulled out my phone and took high-resolution photographs of every single architectural page, including the ventilation duct schematics.
Suddenly, a shadow fell across the carpet below the ladder.
I snapped the binder shut and looked down.
May you like
Vincent Kretti was standing at the base of the ladder, looking up at me through the shadows, holding a crystal glass of amber whiskey.
"Finding what you were looking for, Miss Brennan?" he asked quietly.
