Millie didn’t plan to ignore the warning.
It just happened.
The room was a mess, but the kind that felt alive.
Paint tubes were scattered across the floor like little bombs, half-done canvases propped against the walls like they were taking a break, and brushes were everywhere like someone had dropped everything and walked out mid-thought.
Without really deciding to, she started straightening up—stacking blank canvases, capping an open tube so it wouldn’t dry out.
Her hands moved on their own, like fixing the mess might settle the one inside her head.
She wasn’t painting.
She wasn’t digging through drawers.
She was just… tidying.
Being respectful.
That’s what she told herself anyway.
A brush clattered to the floor and snapped her out of it.
She spun around.
Clara stood in the doorway, arms crossed, lips pressed tight.
“Millie,” Clara said, stepping in like the floor might give way.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Millie froze, hands still sticky with paint.
“I’m—” She looked down at her fingers.
“Cleaning?”
Clara gave her that look.
“Bert said this room is off-limits.”
“I know,” Millie muttered, already defensive.
“I wasn’t doing anything weird. It just looked like someone walked out in the middle of something. Felt wrong to leave it like that.”
Clara let out a long breath, the kind that said she saw this coming.
“You can’t fix everything, Millie. Especially not here. Especially not some rich guy’s weird art cave.”
Millie frowned.
Guilt twisted in her gut, but so did something stubborn.
“It looked… forgotten.”
“Yeah,” Clara said, softer now.
“And that’s not our problem. Come on.”
Millie took one last look at the painting on the easel—half-finished, raw—then nodded and followed Clara out.
“Fine,” she mumbled.
The rest of the job passed in that blurry, muscle-aching way.
By the end of the day, the house looked less like a ghost town and more like a place where a very rich person might actually live again someday.
Everyone was beat.
Rufus loaded the van like he was racing the clock, and May stretched her back with a loud pop that bounced off the marble floors.
“So,” May said, wiping sweat from her forehead, “the art room…”
“Millie went in there. Tidied up.”
Millie opened her mouth to explain, but May waved it off.
“Relax,” May said, slapping a hand on Millie’s shoulder.
“You straightened some paint tubes, not set the place on fire.”
Rufus grunted from the van.
Could’ve been an agreement.
Could’ve been nothing.
Still, Millie didn’t feel good about it.
The whole thing sat heavily in her stomach.
She hadn’t wrecked anything, hadn’t even rearranged much, but that old urge to fix stuff had taken over again.
That night, the worry stuck around.
But Bert didn’t call.
No angry texts, no pissed-off voicemails.
Nothing.
Two full days went by quietly.
By the third day, Millie finally started to relax.
She was curled on the couch under a scratchy thrift-store blanket, surrounded by takeout boxes.
The apartment smelled like bleach and leftover ramen.
The TV blasted some dumb sitcom where everyone had perfect teeth and problems wrapped up in twenty-two minutes.
For once, the knot in her chest loosened.
Then Cody, sprawled next to her with his feet on the coffee table, frowned at his phone.
“Hey, babe?”
Millie looked over, a noodle dangling from her chopsticks.
“Payroll’s messing around again,” he said.
“Might not get paid till Monday. Maybe later.”
She didn’t answer right away.
Just nodded and stared at the screen, even though she wasn’t really watching.
“Again?” she said.
“Rent’s due Friday.” She tried to keep it light, but the words came out tight.
She poked at the noodles.
“I’ll ask Bert about extra shifts.”
Cody gave her that guilty look he always got when money came up.
“You sure? You already do way more than your share.”
Millie bit the inside of her cheek.
He wasn’t wrong.
She’d been carrying most of it since they moved in together three months back.
Tonight, she was too worn out to keep swallowing it.
She almost said something—something real, probably sharp, and definitely overdue.
But her phone rang, loud and sudden.
She grabbed it.
“It’s Bert.”
Cody muted the TV.
“Everything okay?”
She shrugged and answered.
“Hey, Bert. What’s up?”
Bert skipped hello.
His voice came through rough, like he’d chain-smoked.
“Foster, listen. Mr. Moretti wants to talk to you.”
Millie sat up straight.
“Who?”
“The guy who owns the Hillcrest house,” Bert said.
“His assistant, Ms. Cheri, called a bit ago. Said Moretti asked for you specifically.”
Her mouth went dry.
She didn’t need to ask why.
The art room.
That feeling she’d stepped over a line.
“You didn’t do anything stupid, right?” Bert asked.
“No pictures? No messing with stuff?”
Millie’s eyes drifted to the dark TV screen.
Her reflection stared back, waiting.
She took a breath.
“No pictures,” she said calmly.
Which was true.
She hadn’t even pulled her phone out.
Bert didn’t sound sold.
“Okay. Go to his office tomorrow. Alone. I’ll text the address. Don’t screw this up, Millie. And don’t be late.”
He hung up.
Millie set the phone down slowly, heart pounding.
Cody leaned in.
“What was that?”
She forced a smile that felt too small.
“Work stuff.
A client wants to meet.”
“Why?” he asked, frowning.
She shook her head, trying to play it off even as her stomach twisted.
“He didn’t say.”
But deep down, she knew it wasn’t about a streak on a mirror or a speck of dust.