The faint glow of dawn crept through the curtains when Mina stirred awake.
For a moment, she forgot where she was. The soft hum of the air conditioner, the faint lavender scent lingering in the sheets, none of it belonged to her dorm room in Berkeley. Then the memories returned like gentle waves: the flight, the rain, Wes's voice telling her she didn't have to pretend anymore.
She turned to the clock. 6:14 a.m.
The house was silent.
Curiosity tugged at her. She slipped out of bed, pulled on a loose hoodie, and padded barefoot into the hallway. Wes's door was slightly ajar, and she hesitated before peeking in.
He was still asleep.
The morning light slanted across the room, catching the shape of his shoulders as he lay on his side, one arm resting against the pillow. The calm rise and fall of his breathing made him seem almost unreal, like a portrait caught between motion and stillness.
Mina lingered for a heartbeat too long, then pulled away, closing the door softly.
The rest of the house felt different in the early morning, still and watchful. She decided to take another look around, to explore what she hadn't yet seen.
Her steps led her to the staircase in the corner of the living room. She hadn't paid it much attention last night; Wes had given her a tour only of the ground floor, casually skipping whatever lay above.
Now, the stairs seemed to call to her.
They ended at a small landing, where a smooth white wall met a heavy steel door fitted with a biometric pad and a faintly glowing indicator light. The kind of lock she'd only seen in movies of high-security labs or tech facilities.
She pressed her fingers lightly against the cool surface. It didn't budge.
No label. No nameplate. No sound from behind it.
Only silence.
Her mind raced. Why would a businessman need a biometric lock inside his own home?
She thought about what little she knew of him.
He had told her he ran a shipping and logistics company that handles the transportation of cargo for businesses all over the world. But this heavy steel door, the high-tech lock and the blacked out windows on the second floor, they hinted at something broader, deeper.
Maybe this was his private office. Or maybe it was something else entirely.
Mina stepped back, feeling suddenly self-conscious, as if the door itself was watching her. She shook off the feeling, went back down the stairs and towards the back of the house.
The kitchen led to a rear hallway, ending at a sliding glass door that opened to the garden.
The morning air was cool and damp, carrying the scent of grass and rain. The garden stretched farther than she'd expected. It was a wide, rectangular lawn bordered by tall bamboo and flowering shrubs. The landscaping was immaculate, every plant trimmed to precision.
But something was off.
Patches of the grass, near the center of the yard, were flattened and frayed—like someone had been walking, pacing, or running there often. Not animals. The pattern was too deliberate, too wide.
Mina crouched, brushing her fingertips over the damp blades. Beneath them, faint impressions... boot prints? She couldn't tell.
From her position, a patch of disturbed darkness a few feet away caught Mina's eye, just visible beneath the grassy cover. Moving cautiously, she parted the foliage to reveal a square, sunken print in the earth. A quick search uncovered a constellation of similar indentations. These marks, partially obscured but still defined in the soft ground, indicated that multiple heavy objects had recently been relocated. Another few weeks, or maybe days if it rained, she realized, and the evidence would have completely vanished, swallowed by the soil.
Excited by her discovery, she continued to investigate around the area, letting her imagination run wild as to what was previously there and now removed.
Soon her eyes drifted towards the twenty foot high concrete walls surrounding the property. She placed a hand on the walls, lightly banging the base of her fist on the surface, listening for any hint of vibration. None, the walls were completely solid and thick. No gaps, no cracks, no seams, just pure solid concrete that was probably thick enough to shrug off a speeding car crashing into it. Multiple security cameras mounted discreetly along the top of the wall lined the perimeter.
For a man who smiled so easily, her Uncle Wes seemed to live like someone constantly preparing for a siege.
Mina thought back, trying to recall scanning through several online articles about the peace and order situation in the Philippines, about kidnappings during election season and extra judicial killings. Could my uncle have enemies? Mina thought it would stand to reason that a wealthy businessman like her uncle would need to live in a place that was well protected.
But if that were true, Mina reasoned, shouldn't he be constantly surrounded by silent, menacing bodyguards, like the Chaebol heirs in her favorite Netflix K-Dramas? Yet her uncle seemed to move about pretty freely last night when he took her to the mall.
The mall. Mina's investigative thoughts instantly derailed, replaced by the magical, perfect memory of shopping with Wes. It was just like those meticulously staged, heart-fluttering scenes she adored.
She was so lost in her K-Drama fantasy, rewinding the scene of her shopping with Wes to the tune of her favorite K-Pop song, that she completely failed to notice him approaching as she blankly stared at the high wall.
"I see you're admiring my concrete wall," Wes said right behind her, his voice faintly amused. He was dressed casually in a dark shirt and jogging pants.
Mina let out a cute little shriek of surprise, the sound shocking her out of her elaborate daydream. "Uncle Wes! What are you doing here?"
"Well, when I saw my dear niece, fresh from California, standing like a zombie in my garden, staring intently at a concrete wall, I just had to come out and investigate."
Mina's cheeks flushed crimson with embarrassment. She felt utterly exposed, as if caught doing something illicit.
"I—I was just admiring how high and solid your walls are," she stammered.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Wes said, matter-of-factly, easing her security concerns with practiced casualness. "This is a relatively safe neighborhood. The high walls are more for privacy than security. Too many neighbors flying those annoying surveillance drones."
"Oh," Mina said, the simple explanation cooling her detective instincts, leaving her slightly deflated by the normalcy of it all.
He stepped beside her, stretching his arms wide in the cool morning air, the sunlight catching in his hair. "I was planning to show you the garden later. You beat me to it."
"It's beautiful," she said honestly. "You take good care of it."
"I try," he said, glancing around. "It's quiet here. Helps me think."
There was a brief pause. Mina looked toward the house, her gaze flicking for an instant to the stairwell visible through the living room window. She opened her mouth, almost asking what was upstairs, but stopped herself.
"Do you work from home sometimes?" she asked instead.
"Sometimes," Wes said easily. "Why?"
"Just wondering. Your place feels… different. Like there's more to it than meets the eye."
He looked at her for a moment, a faint, unreadable smile playing on his lips. "That's an interesting way to put it."
Mina felt her face warm. "Sorry, I didn't mean—"
"It's fine." He turned toward the pond, hands in his pockets. "Every house has secrets known only to its occupants. You just arrived but you'll get there eventually."
The way he said it, half playful, half evasive, made her even more curious. But his last statement truly made her feel welcome and erased her mind of suspicions.
"Come on," he said after a beat. "I'll make us breakfast. Filipino-style, garlic rice, eggs and longganisa. You'll love it."
She followed him back inside, glancing one last time toward the locked second floor.