The Scullery Sanctuary
By @john1208
The day a strange courier shoved a squirming wooden crate into my hands, my life as Neva Relladon officially ended. Inside was a blackmail letter demanding I vanish, accompanied by a shivering stray puppy. With my family disgraced and destitute, I fled to the only place high society wouldn't look: the heavily fortified Dastran Manor. Now, I play the part of a cheerfully dense scullery maid to mask my sharp aristocratic upbringing. My employer, Kestian, is a terrifyingly cold recluse who blames himself for the fatal car crash that wiped out his family. Our worlds collide the night he catches me smuggling the muddy mutt into the kitchens. Instead of throwing us out, he silently hands me a towel. Slowly, our late-night puppy-feeding sessions and my terrible jokes become his only lifeline. The domestic intimacy between us grows into a fierce, unspoken devotion, with Kestian shielding me from Cressa, his snobby childhood friend who thinks she owns him. But when a saboteur begins terrorizing the estate, we discover the attacker is just a grieving father seeking justice for the very crash that haunts Kestian. Can we uncover the truth of that night before it destroys our fragile, hard-won peace?
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