“I WAS CLEANING THE MANSION OF THE RICHEST MAN IN AMERICA AND FOUND A FORBIDDEN PAINTING COVERED WITH A SHEET! WHEN I UNCOVERED IT, -NANA

Chapter 1 – The Shadow in the Mansion

I never imagined the past could hide so perfectly behind marble walls, silk curtains, and polished floors that never once reflected my real name or story.

My name is Elena Vega, twenty-eight years old, and until days ago I was nobody, just another invisible worker swallowed by the rich neighborhoods high above the city.

Every morning I woke at four-thirty in my cramped apartment, took buses and metro, crossing from chaos to manicured silence where money made even the air smell different.

Once I buttoned my uniform, Elena vanished; in her place appeared “the maid,” a pair of cracked hands that scrubbed away other people’s messes and polished their careless luxuries.

Those hands once dreamed of holding art history books in a university classroom, but bleach burned the dreams out, leaving only rough skin and quiet, obedient movements.

Don Augusto Ferraz’s mansion towered over Las Lomas, all glass, stone, and guarded gates; everything inside screamed power, influence, and a strange, echoing loneliness nobody dared mention aloud.

To us staff, he was a myth more than a man, “the steel king” from business magazines, a storm of power crossing hallways with phone glued to ear.

I had only seen him twice, striding through the lobby, suit immaculate, brow furrowed beneath the weight of an empire and some sadness nobody could afford to ask about.

That suffocating October Tuesday, I was assigned to clean the library, the grandest room of all, intimidating yet secretly my favorite place in the entire mansion.

Shelves climbed two stories high, ladders slid silently on brass rails, and the smell of old wood clung to the air, reminding me painfully of my mother, Carolina.

She had taught literature at the university before illness devoured her strength five years ago, leaving me alone with debts, grief, and a world that suddenly felt hostile.

The housekeeper, Doña Carmela, warned me sharply to avoid the north wall, never touch the covered painting, insisting the patrón lost his mind whenever anyone went near it.

That painting haunted me even hidden; a linen sheet draped over it like a ghost, radiating a quiet pull, as if secrets pulsed just beneath the pale fabric.

While dusting the mahogany desk, my fingers brushed documents signed “Ferraz,” and a feverish memory surfaced, my mother whispering “Augusto” days before dying, a name I had dismissed.

I had thought she meant the month, or some Roman emperor from her books, never imagining the name belonged to a living man walking above my mop.

I shook the thought away, reminding myself that losing this job meant losing rent, food, and whatever fragile stability I had stitched together after my mother’s funeral.

I pushed the ladder toward the far molding, climbed three meters high, and stretched to reach a corner when a sudden gust from an open window swept through.

The linen sheet over the forbidden painting billowed, lifted, and slipped free from one corner, revealing a flash of frame and color my heart instantly recognized.

It lasted only a heartbeat, but what I saw emptied my lungs—a golden frame and a fragment of a smile I knew better than my own reflection.

It was my mother’s smile, younger and brighter, the one cancer had stolen from us; seeing it again felt like being dragged backward through time without warning.

I knew I was forbidden to touch that painting, knew curiosity could cost me my job, yet something louder than fear screamed that I needed to see everything.

My hands shook as I climbed higher, fingers closing around the sheet; in one motion, driven by something beyond reason, I pulled it down and let it fall.