The estate with no mirrors

The car’s engine purred to silence beneath a sky smeared with copper clouds. The estate rose like something carved from memory ,tall, white-stoned, and wreathed in ivy, its windows like dark, watching eyes. Elena Hart stepped out of the back seat in silence, her boots crunching on the gravel, her heartbeat louder than the wind.

“Home sweet home,” her mother said with forced brightness, her glossy lips stretched too thin. She lit a cigarette the moment the driver lifted the trunk.

Elena didn’t respond. She stared up at the mansion like it might vanish if she blinked. It looked cold, too symmetrical, like it had been curated for a magazine and forgotten. Not a single mirror in the windows, not a single sign of life except the tight buzz of trimmed hedges and the echoing calls of crows somewhere deep in the woods beyond.Then she saw him.He stepped out of the front door like he owned the earth it was built on. Tall. Impeccably dressed in charcoal and black. A face carved from quiet storms ,sharp jaw, storm-colored eyes, silvering temples that made him look timeless. Victor Albright. Her new stepfather.

“Elena,” he said. His voice was warm, low, and too smooth. A practiced kind of charm. “Welcome.”
She didn’t say anything at first. Her breath caught, a strange pulse rushing through her as he walked toward her,not fast, not slow. Confident. Measured.He reached for her suitcase. “Let me.”

“No, I got it,” she said too quickly. Their fingers brushed. Hers tingled. His didn’t move.Something flickered in his eyes. Amusement? Curiosity? It was gone before she could read it.
“I hope you’ll be happy here,” he said, still holding her suitcase like it weighed nothing. “There’s room to be alone. If that’s what you need.”What did that mean?

She followed him inside, her mother trailing behind them with distracted comments about marble floors and antique staircases. The air inside the house was too still. No humming appliances. No ticking clocks. Just the faint scent of bergamot and cedarwood ,his scent, she guessed.As they passed hallway after hallway, Elena noticed something strange.No mirrors.Not one in the entryway. None on the walls. Not even above the fireplace where a family portrait might have belonged.

She stopped. “Why aren’t there any mirrors?”
Victor turned his head slightly, not enough to face her. “They reflect more than just faces.”He kept walking. She stared after him.

That night, Elena’s mother unpacked in the master bedroom. Victor had made sure Elena’s room was on the other side of the east wing,too far to hear anything. Her room was beautiful. Cold. Like a dollhouse waiting to be filled with pretend.She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering who Victor Albright really was. Her mother barely spoke about him before the wedding. They married after just three months of knowing each other. Elena had only met him twice before today. Once, briefly, when he came to dinner in a crisp black suit and watched her over the rim of his wine glass. The second time, at the courthouse wedding, where he kissed her mother like he didn’t even care who was watching.

At midnight, something woke her.A knock. Three soft taps. Then silence.She sat up, heart pounding.Another knock,this time closer. Her door. But when she opened it, the hallway was empty.Only the faint sound of piano music drifting through the floorboards, from somewhere deeper in the house.Drawn to it, barefoot and silent, she wandered through the dark. Down the curved staircase. Past antique portraits of people whose eyes seemed to follow her. Toward the west wing.The music stopped.She found the music room. The piano was open. Still vibrating slightly.

And in the reflection of the black piano lid, barely visible ,Victor, standing behind her.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
She turned fast. “I… didn’t mean to—”He raised a hand to silence her. Not cruel. Just calm.

“There are places in this house you shouldn’t wander. Especially at night.”She nodded.
“I won’t tell your mother,” he added, stepping past her, brushing her shoulder with his fingertips as he closed the piano. “But next time… ask.”He left her there. Cold. Awake. Shivering for a reason that had nothing to do with the air.

End of Chapter One.

Chapter end