Free Web NovelChapter 13: In front of everyone, strip her pockets
April smoothed down her uniform, forced her face back into a dull, submissive expression, and glanced back at her room. This... might be goodbye.
If she didn’t return today, she was definitely not going to miss this run down attic but it did feel a bit nostalgic.
She went down to the staff quarters to find Matilda.
The housekeeper was in the back linen room, her face red and her eyes swollen from a sleepless night of worrying over her docked salary. When April walked in, Matilda’s pinched features instantly twisted into a venomous scowl.
"What do you want, you lazy rat?" Matilda snapped, throwing a folded sheet onto a table. "Shouldn’t you be scrubbing the grand hall? If Madam finds a single speck of dust, we’re all finished!"
"I’m sorry, Matilda," April said, lowering her voice to sound weak and frail. "But I woke up with a severe fever this morning. My chest hurts, and my limbs are shaking. I need formal permission to leave the grounds for an hour to go to the pharmacy and get some medicine. If I collapse on the grand hall floors, it will only anger Madam further."
Matilda narrowed her eyes, stepping closer as she inspected April with deep suspicion. She had an ugly, vindictive gut feeling that April was faking it.
More than that, Matilda was hurting from yesterday’s humiliation, and she was desperate to take her rage out on someone helpless.
"Fever? You look perfectly fine to me," Matilda sneered. Then, a sharp, malicious glint flashed in her eyes. "Wait a minute... Miss Liora’s priceless heirloom goes missing, and suddenly the household charity case and a well reputed thief is claiming she’s ’sick’ and needs to run out of the gates? How convenient."
Before April could even respond, Matilda raised her voice and yelled out the door. "Guards! Get in here right now!"
Two burly estate guards in black uniforms stepped into the linen room, their expressions stern.
"Search her," Matilda demanded, pointing a crooked finger at April. "In front of everyone. Strip her pockets. I want to make sure this thief isn’t sneaking the young mistress’s jade necklace out of this house."
April felt a cold flare of anger ignite in her chest, but she kept her voice tightly controlled.
"Matilda, I don’t have it. And if I must be searched, the guards shouldn’t be the ones doing it. I am a woman. Let the other maids search me in private instead."
Matilda let out a harsh, mocking laugh, her face contorting with spite. "Let the other maids do it? Ha! What if you connived with them? What if you passed the necklace to Sarah or Chloe? I can’t be too sure with rats like you."
"And what makes it any different with the guards?" April countered, her voice dropping its submissive tone entirely. "What’s to stop me from conniving with them?"
"Shut your mouth!" Matilda shrieked, entirely unaccustomed to April talking back. She wanted to utterly break the girl, to humiliate her so deeply that she would forget how to speak. "Guards, she’s hiding it. Strip her. Check her bra, check her panties, strip her completely naked right here until we find that rock!"
"Matilda!" April shrieked in shock.
The guards stepped forward, their hands reaching out.
April felt a sudden, visceral wave of disgust and humiliation wash over her. She had almost forgotten how monstrously cruel Matilda used to be in her past life—how a servant girl’s basic human dignity meant absolutely less than nothing to these people. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Crying, pleading, and begging for innocence had gotten her stomped on for ten years.
But April wasn’t that helpless girl anymore. She was someone who had watched the old world rot to its core.
She had planned to lay low until she found a way to leave without giving them a reason to hunt her down but... with this? She was done walking on eggshells.
Never again would she let anyone walk all over her. If anyone tried to stomp on her, she would be the one to crush them beneath her heel.
"The romance book," April said.
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was so incredibly cold, sharp, and deadpan that it cut through the room like a razor blade.
Matilda froze, her foot hovering mid-step. The guards paused, looking confused.
"What did you just say?" Matilda stammered, her face losing a fraction of its color.
April stood up perfectly straight, her chin lifted high as she stared directly into the housekeeper’s panicked eyes with a terrifyingly calm smirk.
"I said, I heard you love romance books, Matilda. Especially one specific, thick paperback that you keep hidden very carefully under your mattress. The one with a hollowed-out square inside the pages. Now, isn’t that interesting?"
Matilda’s breath hitched completely. Her jaw dropped, and a sudden, violent tremor ran through her hands.
"I wonder what Madam Morgan would do," April continued, her voice a low, dangerous purr, "if she found out that the person who has been skimming three hundred dollars a week from her grocery budget for the past eight months... was her most loyal, snobbish housekeeper. Do you think she’ll just dock your salary, or do you think she’ll have the guards strip you naked before throwing you in a dark cell?"
"Y-You... how do you..." Matilda choked on her own saliva, her face turning completely white. "I don’t know what you’re talking about!" She tried to bite back but she looked like she was about to faint.
The power dynamic in the room shattered in a single second. April had the leash tight around Matilda’s neck, and the housekeeper knew she was entirely at the maid’s mercy.
"What is this stupid commotion?!"
A sharp, arrogant voice cut through the tension as the door flew open completely.
Madam Morgan marched into the linen room, her designer clothes pristine but her face twisted in absolute fury.
"I can hear your screeching from the hallway, Matilda! I told you to find my daughter’s necklace, not stand around gossiping with the trash!"
