The kitchen was empty when I found it.

Not unusual for a Saturday morning in a house this size, where Chef Laurent apparently kept banker’s hours and Mrs. Tanaka ran on her own mysterious schedule. The industrial espresso machine sat on the counter like a monument to excess, surrounded by enough coffee equipment to stock a small café, and I spent a full minute just staring at it before deciding I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to figure out which button made actual coffee versus which one would launch the thing into orbit.

There had to be a regular coffee maker somewhere. Something with an on switch and a carafe and no touchscreen.

I started opening cabinets.

The first one had fourteen varieties of loose-leaf tea organized by country of origin. The second had enough spices to season a small country. The third had what appeared to be a very expensive collection of artisanal hot sauces that I was choosing not to think about too hard.

Fourth cabinet: jackpot. A perfectly ordinary drip coffee maker, shoved in the back behind a French press and what appeared to be a pour-over setup for people who had decided that regular coffee was for people who didn’t hate themselves enough. Next to it sat a red tin that said Colombia, Medium Roast, in plain block letters like it was embarrassed to be there.

I was already reaching for the tin when I heard her voice.

Not one of the sisters. Different cadence entirely, lower and measured, with that slight accent I’d noticed but never been able to place precisely. Mandarin, maybe, or something adjacent. Mrs. Tanaka’s voice carried from the butler’s pantry just off the kitchen, the door ajar about six inches.

I should have just made my coffee and left.

I absolutely did not just make my coffee and leave.

The tin went back on the shelf. I took three careful steps toward the pantry door, which put me behind the kitchen island with a clear sightline to the gap in the door and absolutely zero justification for being there.

She was on her phone. Standing with her back partially toward me, one hand resting on a shelf of inventory she’d probably been cataloging, her dark uniform as pristine at eight in the morning as it was at midnight.

"Yes, Mrs. Valentine," she was saying. "He returned with the young ladies approximately forty minutes ago."

A pause. I couldn’t hear Camille’s voice from this distance, just the faint tinny quality of someone talking through a phone speaker.

"The sister is still in residence. She appears to be comfortable." Another pause, shorter. "Yes, I am aware you requested a full report."

My brain was doing math I didn’t like. Full report. I’m aware you requested. This was not a casual check-in call. This was a debrief. Mrs. Tanaka had been filing reports this whole time, which meant every midnight ramen run, every time I’d wandered the halls in yesterday’s clothes trying to find Harlow’s room or the library or just a bathroom that wasn’t forty feet away from my own bedroom, every moment I’d spent in this house had potentially been observed, noted, and transmitted to the woman who had threatened to use my sister as leverage.

I was going to need something stronger than Colombian medium roast.

"The situation has progressed," Mrs. Tanaka said, and something in her voice changed. Not warmer, exactly, but more deliberate. Like she was choosing each word the way you’d choose which wire to cut. "The young ladies have expressed their intentions to Mr. Angelo directly."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"He was reluctant." She paused again, listening. "No, Mrs. Valentine, I do not believe it is performance. His reluctance appears genuine." She turned slightly, and I pressed myself a centimeter further behind the island, which accomplished nothing because the island didn’t have a side to hide behind and I was basically just standing in the kitchen hoping the concept of shadows was doing more work than physics suggested it could. "He cited his employment, the morality clause, and his concern for his sister on multiple occasions."

I realized I was holding my breath and made myself stop.

"I observed the interaction in the Archive last night." A very careful pause. "He stopped it. Twice." The word landed with specific weight, like she was placing it somewhere deliberate. "Mrs. Valentine, I have worked in this household for eleven years. I am familiar with the type of individual who courts young women for financial gain." Another pause. "This is not that."

The coffee maker sat on the counter behind me and I was not even slightly tempted to start it because the sound might cover whatever she said next.

"Yes," Mrs. Tanaka said, and whatever Camille had just said apparently required acknowledgment before a rebuttal. "I understand your concerns are legitimate. I am not suggesting otherwise." A pause. "I am suggesting that the information you received from the security analysis is incomplete."

Holy shit. She knew about the background check.

Of course she knew about the background check. She’d probably been the one to provide half the information for it.

I needed to leave. I needed to walk back to the other end of this kitchen, make my coffee, and pretend I had not just heard Mrs. Tanaka apparently defending my honor to the woman who had threatened to weaponize my sister against me.

"The morality clause," she said, and her voice shifted into something slightly drier, "was, in my professional observation, unnecessary. He had already constructed his own."

Another pause. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"I am not suggesting you approve, Mrs. Valentine. I am suggesting you have accurate information before you act." The briefest silence. "The Valentine daughters are not stupid children who require protection from their own judgment. They are seventeen years old and they have made a considered decision. Interfering without full information may produce consequences that cannot be reversed."

The response from the other end went on for a while. Long enough that Mrs. Tanaka’s expression shifted through several variations of neutral before settling on something that might have been patience in another person.

"I will continue my duties as assigned," she said finally. "And I will continue to observe. You have my word." A beat. "Yes, Mrs. Valentine. Of course."

She ended the call. Stood perfectly still for about three seconds. Then she turned around, walked out of the butler’s pantry, saw me standing behind the kitchen island holding absolutely nothing and looking exactly as guilty as I was, and did not react at all.

She just looked at me.

I looked at her.

"The Colombian medium roast," she said, "is in the fourth cabinet from the left. The measurements are on the side of the tin." She set her phone in her apron pocket. "The machine takes eight minutes to brew a full pot."

She walked past me toward the door that led to the service corridor.

"Mrs. Tanaka," I said.

She stopped but didn’t turn around.

"I want you to know," I started, and then wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Thank you felt wrong. Too easy. Too small for whatever she’d just done in there, which I was still processing in pieces. "I know you were assigned to report on me."

"Yes," she said.

"And you did. You reported accurately."

"I report what I observe," she said. "That is my function."

"What you observed was apparently enough to make a case for me."

She was quiet for a moment. "I observed a young man who entered this household with limited options and has conducted himself with more integrity than many individuals who enter it with unlimited ones." She paused again. "I also observed that Miss Vivienne smiled genuinely for the first time in fourteen months. That Miss Cassidy completed her homework without being asked on four separate occasions. That Miss Harlow stopped apologizing for taking up space." A very brief silence. "That information is relevant."

"What did she say? Camille." I shouldn’t have asked. She wasn’t going to tell me and I knew it.

Mrs. Tanaka finally turned around. Her expression remained completely neutral, but her eyes were doing something that wasn’t quite warm but wasn’t cold either. "She said she is considering her position on the matter."

Which translated to: she hadn’t said no. Which was different from yes, obviously, but for a woman who had already threatened to destroy my sister’s future and inserted a morality clause into my employment contract, considering felt like a lot.

"That’s more than I expected," I said honestly.

"She is a difficult woman," Mrs. Tanaka agreed. "She is also not a stupid one. She knows the difference between a threat to her family and a change to it."

I thought about that. The tin of Colombian coffee was still sitting on the counter. The machine was waiting. Somewhere in the house, four identical girls with purple eyes were probably still fighting over which one of them got to spend Christmas morning opening presents with me, which was a sentence that my brain was still trying to digest without short-circuiting.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

She waited.

"How many of the previous seven assistants did you report on?"

"All of them," she said. "Accurately."

"And they all left."

"They all gave me less to report." She said it completely without satisfaction, just fact. "The first one cried during his initial tour of the east wing. The fourth one attempted to photograph Miss Sabrina through her bedroom window with his phone. The sixth one," a very slight pause, "asked me which sister was most likely to be ’flexible’ with boundaries."

The coffee machine was starting to seem like it existed in a completely different context than the one I’d walked into this kitchen with.

"I’m going to be honest," I said. "I have no idea what I’m doing."

"No," she agreed. "You don’t. But your uncertainty is about the right things." She glanced toward the coffee machine. "Eight minutes," she reminded me, and walked out.