Chapter 2 - The House That Listened
“A label isn't a person,” the examiner said.
She had introduced herself as Leah Okafor and refused to let anyone call the devices anything more dramatic than units until she had looked at them.
I liked her immediately.
She photographed the bed before moving anything. Documented where each unit had been found. Asked who had handled them and wrote down my answer without making me feel foolish for having hands.
“An owner account can be named for an owner without every action coming directly from that person,” she explained. “We need the records, the configuration, and the actual equipment. Not guesses.”
Bruno handed over the phone.
Dante stood at the window with a coffee he hadn't drunk.
“Can those things keep a man awake?” he asked.
“They can produce sound and vibration. What they were set to do, and what effect they had on you, are questions we examine separately.”
He looked at the six black shapes on her work mat.
“So I imagined it.”
Leah looked up.
“That isn't what I said.”
The correction was calm enough to reach him.
Dr. Helen Park arrived shortly afterward. She hadn't been part of his usual household medical arrangements. Dante had requested someone independent after speaking to his outside attorney.
She asked for privacy.
I stood immediately.
So did everyone else.
Before I left, Dante said my name.
“Don't go home yet.”
I looked at him.
“Am I being ordered to stay?”
He glanced at Bruno. At the torn bed. Then back at me.
“I'm asking you to remain available while your safety is assessed. You can call someone. You can have advice of your own.”
It was still a frightening request in a frightening house.
But it was an answer.
“I need to call my mother.”
“Then do.”
Mrs. Bell took me downstairs.
The mansion had continued behaving like a mansion while the private suite came apart. Flowers were being changed. Somebody argued quietly about a late produce delivery. A vacuum hummed in a room near the entrance.
I had discovered something terrible, and the day still required clean floors.
Mrs. Bell put tea in front of me.
“You should eat.”
“Am I fired?”
She stared at me.
“The man's bed was full of machinery someone didn't tell him about, and you're worried about the leather?”
“It's very expensive leather.”
Her mouth twitched.
“Eat.”
My mother answered from the rehabilitation center where she was recovering after a stroke. She was improving. Improvement was slow, expensive, and not interested in the limits of my bank account.
“How's the new job?” she asked.
I looked at the bandage on my thumb.
“Complicated.”
“Is the boss difficult?”
“I'm starting to think the furniture is worse.”
She laughed.
I held the sound close for a moment before asking about her day.
When I returned to the sitting room near the private wing, Bruno stood alone by the door.
“You thought I was reaching for a gun,” he said.
I stopped.
“Yes.”
He nodded once.
“Fair.”
It was such an unexpected answer that I looked at him properly.
There were dark circles under his eyes, too.
“How long have you worked for him?”
“Twelve years.”
“Did you know he was this tired?”
“I knew he wasn't sleeping. I thought the doctors were handling it.”
He looked toward the closed door.
“That's going to sound worse every time I say it.”
Inside, Leah had established enough to make the room feel colder without changing its temperature.
The units weren't ordinary parts listed in the bed's original specifications. They had storage, small speakers, and vibration components. There was evidence of repeated activity over a period consistent with the months Dante described.
She would preserve and examine the contents rather than demonstrate them on a person.
Dr. Park was equally firm.
Dante needed appropriate care, a protected place to rest, and a proper review of what had happened. Removing the devices didn't make every symptom instantly disappear or every earlier doctor dishonest.
He listened with the rigid expression of a man who disliked needing anything.
I knew that expression. I wore a cheaper version of it.
“I'm not sleeping in this room,” he said.
“Good,” Dr. Park replied.
He looked surprised that agreeing with him could sound so much like a decision she had already made.
By late afternoon, police had been contacted through counsel. The equipment and the room were being treated as potential evidence. Leah would provide her findings through the investigation, not to a room full of impatient employees.
Dante sat in a chair near the window while we waited for transport to the private clinic Dr. Park had arranged.
For the first time, he looked smaller than his reputation.
“Did you notice it before?” he asked me.
“The vibration? No. Today was my first time changing those sheets alone.”
“Why didn't you call someone?”
I thought about giving him a better answer.
“I thought if it was a loose part, I'd fix it before anyone decided I'd broken it.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“That's how people expect to be treated here?”
I didn't answer quickly enough.
He set down the coffee.
Mrs. Bell brought the purchase file for the bed. She had retained the household copy because she retained everything involving furniture nobody could move without six people and an argument.
The delivery date was four months earlier.
The bed had been a birthday gift.
I looked at the card attached to the invoice.
For once, buy yourself something you'll actually use. Love, Lucia.
“Who's Lucia?” I asked before I could stop myself.
May you like
Dante's face changed.
“My sister.”
