Chapter 6: Whispers in the Walls

Chapter 6: Whispers in the Walls

Grant’s voice lingered in the silent villa long after the call ended, a phantom slick of oil on the clean, sterile air. No… disturbances? The question had been a trap, and she had walked right into it, her denial a flimsy shield against his unseen, all-knowing gaze. Julian’s warning and Grant’s surveillance were two sides of the same terrifying coin, and she was trapped between them. She was no longer just a burnt-out assistant on a forced vacation; she was a piece in a game she didn’t understand, on a board where the walls themselves were watching.

Sharon returned late in the afternoon, her face aglow from the sun and her time with Arthur. Her world was expanding, filled with tide pools and whispered secrets from a literary genius. Elara’s world had shrunk to the dimensions of the villa, a cage of glass and secrets. The distance between them was palpable. Seeing the genuine happiness in her friend’s eyes, Elara couldn’t bring herself to shatter it with her own spiraling fear. She kept her silence, a lonely sentinel guarding a truth Sharon couldn't see.

That evening, after Sharon had gone to her room—likely to dream of silver-haired novelists—Elara tried to reclaim a sliver of normalcy. She took a book, a thick paperback thriller, out to the veranda. The air was warm, the sky a tapestry of deepening purples and oranges. She tried to read, but the words swam before her eyes. Every rustle of a palm frond, every chirp of a cicada, sounded like a prelude to the footsteps above. After a few futile minutes, a sudden gust of wind scattered the cocktail napkins on the table. Startled, she gathered her things and retreated inside, leaving the book face down on the patio lounge chair.

She made herself a cup of chamomile tea in the cavernous kitchen, her movements jerky and unnaturally loud in the silence. She felt a desperate need to anchor herself in simple, logical actions. You are making tea. You are in Florida. There are no such things as ghosts.

When she finally entered her bedroom, ready to surrender to another sleepless night, she froze in the doorway.

There, on her nightstand, placed perfectly parallel to the lamp, was her book.

Ice flooded her veins. She stared at it, her mind refusing to process what her eyes were seeing. It was impossible. The glass doors to her private patio were locked from the inside. She had been in the kitchen the entire time. No one had entered the villa; she would have heard them. She took a tentative step into the room, then another. There was no sign of entry, no disturbance in the pristine room, save for the object that could not possibly be there. She touched its cover, the cardboard still warm from the evening air. It was real.

A wave of nausea and terror washed over her. This wasn't a sound she could dismiss as a crab or the wind. This was an action. An intelligent, deliberate, impossible action. Someone had been in her room. Or something.

Fighting a rising tide of panic, she forced herself to move, to check the rest of the house. She crept through the vast, moonlit living space, her heart hammering against her ribs. As she passed the darkened hallway leading to the other guest wings, she stopped.

A scent.

It was faint, almost imperceptible, hanging in the still air. It wasn't the heady jasmine from outside or Sharon's coconut-scented sunscreen. It was delicate, powdery, and deeply unfamiliar. Lily of the Valley, she thought. It smelled like old money, like a memory, like a perfume someone’s mother might have worn decades ago. It was the scent of a woman who was not there.

That was it. The breaking point. The passive fear curdled into a hot, sharp-edged resolve. She would not be terrorized by whispers and shadows in a house built by a master manipulator. Her greatest asset had always been her mind, her ability to find patterns, to connect dots, to unearth information. Grant had trained her to be the best, and now she would turn those skills against the very secrets he was trying to protect.

Back in her room, she snatched her tablet from the nightstand—ignoring the book that sat beside it—and curled into the corner of the bed, the blankets pulled up to her chin like armor. Her fingers, slick with a cold sweat, flew across the screen.

Her first search was logical, methodical. Ashford Aeronautics Paradise Key architectural plans. Paradise Key villa blueprints. Nothing. The search results were a barren landscape of PR articles about Grant’s business acumen and links to Ashford Aeronautics’ public site. Of course. A man like Grant wouldn't leave the plans for his private fortress lying around on the internet.

Fine. If she couldn’t investigate the house, she would investigate its owner. Not the CEO she worked for, but the man. She typed in Grant Ashford personal life. More of the same: glossy, curated profiles from Forbes and Fortune, photos of him at charity galas, brief mentions of his status as one of the world's most eligible bachelors.

She dug deeper, her search terms becoming sharper, more specific. Grant Ashford divorce. Grant Ashford scandal. Grant Ashford ex-wife.

The internet fought back. Links were dead, leading to “404 Not Found” errors. Images appeared as broken thumbnails. She could feel the ghost of a massive, expensive digital cleanup crew. Someone had deliberately, meticulously, scrubbed this information from the web. But they hadn’t been perfect.

A snippet appeared, a cached result from a low-tier gossip blog dated eight years prior. The text was fragmented, the formatting broken, but the headline was crystal clear: ASHFORD DIVORCE BATTLE HEATS UP. SOCIALITE PAULA ASHFORD VOWS TO FIGHT GAG ORDER.

Paula.

The name landed with the force of a physical blow. Elara’s breath hitched. She typed Paula Ashford into the search bar.

A few photos appeared, mostly from the early 2000s. A beautiful woman with a dazzling, camera-ready smile and kind, laughing eyes, her arm linked through Grant’s. She was radiant, vibrant, the perfect corporate wife. There were captions from the society pages: Grant and Paula Ashford at the Met Gala. Paula Ashford chairs the Children’s Literacy Foundation benefit.

And then, nothing. Around the same time as the gossip blog headline, she simply vanished. No more photos. No articles. No social media presence. It was as if Paula Ashford, a woman once at the pinnacle of New York society, had walked off the face of the earth.

Elara stared at the screen, at the smiling face of the woman who was no longer there. The pieces began to click into place with horrifying clarity. Julian’s warning about a place holding onto people. The scent of a woman’s perfume. The frantic, trapped footsteps. The rattle, like pills in a bottle.

And Grant’s voice on the phone, fishing. No disturbances? He hadn't been asking if she was enjoying her vacation. He was asking if the ghost had been quiet.

The ghost in the ceiling had a name. Paula.

Elara looked up from the tablet, her eyes drawn to the smooth, white expanse above her bed. The villa was silent. But for the first time, she could hear it clearly: a whisper, more real than any sound, that seemed to emanate from the very walls around her. Paula. Paula. Paula.