For the next several hours, the ten guests explored the mansion. Almost tentatively, at first. Quietly. But as more drinks were delivered by the waitstaff, and they grew accustomed to the idea that this was, indeed, their new home for the next week, they grew louder, more excited, and almost probing in their exploration of the Westlake Estate mansion.
As the guests moved throughout the manor, they found room after endless room of lavish style and grandeur. It was the sort of lifestyle that most people only dreamed of.
The main foyer at the front entrance was a grand sight in itself. Upon entering the mansion’s double doors, the guests first saw the massive dual staircases flanking an authentic, ancient Greek statue. The stairs spiraled up on each side to a second floor hallway, which overlooked the foyer behind polished marble banisters.
In the various mansion rooms, guests found ornately framed original artwork, rugs more expensive than most cars, and custom-built mahogany furniture. Some rooms had more modern amenities and styling, but most were fashioned in a more classical way with many early European influences.
Several of the guests found their way out to the lush gardens and then to the adjacent patio. Sophia took off her heels and sat at the pool’s edge, allowing her long legs to glide back and forth in the clear water as she sipped on another flute of Cristal. David, the middle-aged lawyer, flanked her on one side, standing over her nervously. He attempted to seem more interested in her husband and two kids (both pregnancies via surrogate, of course), rather than in her long legs and tight dress.
“Yeah, definitely, my kids love soccer, too,” he said lamely as his gaze faltered.
Sophia didn’t say anything back. She just let him soak up the view. It was hard to blame him, after all. She interacted with men of his type all the time. Bored at home, bored with their wives, bored at work. She excited them, and she loved it.
Just the same, she definitely wasn’t interested in Mr. Cho. At least not in that way. He simply was not her type, aside from his wealth. But her husband already had money, so what good was that alone in another man? Parker was the one guest who had definitely caught her eye, but for now he was off gallivanting with the two younger people. So, as it were, she let David think she might be interested in him. After all, any attention that he devoted to her still felt good, even if the bearer of it was a complete bore.
Frank and Thomas had wandered into the trophy room. Mounted animal heads lined the walls on all sides. There were deer, a mountain lion, a gazelle, a pair of tigers, and even an elephant’s head. A bearskin rug sprawled across the floor in front of a massive fireplace.
Frank sat on a red velvet couch beneath a wall of trophies. He gazed up at a massive swordfish hanging from chains above him. Then he grinned for the first time since he’d arrived. The smile looked somewhat awkward on the ex-sheriff’s naturally stern face.
“I like this couch,” he said, shifting in it purposefully. “It’s way more comfortable than it looks.”
Thomas, the nerdy-looking engineer, nodded as he stood nearby, examining a small animal he didn’t recognize mounted above the fireplace.
“This room is so garish,” he said quietly, moving his gaze from one animal to the next.
“What?” Frank said. “This is a man’s room! I mean, just look at that swordfish. It’s a beauty. I caught one just like it. Two… no, it was three, yeah, three summers ago, when I was in Puerto Vallarta with my wife. She always insists that I need to get out more. She usually gets me to go on her damn vacations by allowing me at least a day to fish. I didn’t even want to come here this week. But she insisted. I still don’t know why she had to enter me into this damn drawing.”
“You had to be dragged here?” Thomas asked. “I like my job and all, but this is paradise.”
He certainly sounded enthused, but there was something about the way he said it that didn’t ring true for Frank.
“I don’t know, I definitely didn’t sign up for some god-damned silly game or whatever that Brit was babbling about,” he said.
“Look, just try to relax, Frank,” Thomas said in an oddly stiff sort of way. “You might enjoy yourself.”
“You sound like my wife now,” Frank said, but then reluctantly smiled. He once again leaned back on the sofa and looked up at the swordfish. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted, holding up his glass of Dalmore forty-year reserve. “Especially in this room, on this couch, with scotch this good in my hand.”
Thomas nodded and smiled awkwardly. He let a few moments of silence pass and then asked what he’d been dying to since they’d been dismissed.
“So, what do you suppose the game is going to be, anyway? The one that the butler was talking about?” he asked.
Frank looked at Thomas for a moment. He realized he didn’t have an answer for him. Thomas seemed to pick up on it and they both shrugged in unison under the watchful, glassy-eyed gaze of the beasts hanging all around them.
Elsewhere in the mansion, other guests were wondering the exact same thing. Some were even openly speculating.
“Maybe this is, like, some sort of new reality show or something. And there’s, like, hidden cameras all around us?” Bryce said as he leafed through a huge book with leather-binding.
Bryce, Emily, and Parker, the three youngest guests, had found their way to the massive library. It was two stories of wall-to-wall books of all kinds. Several ladders with wheels on tracks were spaced throughout the room. Emily had led them there in hopes of discovering some sort of clue as to who the owner of the mansion might be.
“Yeah, but what would be the point of the show?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know, dude,” Bryce said, getting more excited as he got further into his theory, “maybe, like, they put us all in a house together and then see how we all interact? Kind of like The Real World, except nobody knows, right? You know, since, like, people act differently than they really would when they know they’re gonna be on TV? It’s, like, hidden camera Real World! Hidden World!”
“Maybe,” Parker said, trying to decide if Bryce was joking or just simply stupid.
“That’s not what’s going on,” Emily said. “I mean, you need to sign waivers and stuff like that to be on TV. Besides, they’re not going to serve you, a minor, alcohol and then film it and air it on ABC. This isn’t a TV show, no way. I wonder if it’s going to be some kind of ‘Most Dangerous Game’–type thing.”
Bryce, looking every bit the unemployed stoner he likely was, and Parker, seemingly a typical, douchey jock, just looked at her with blank stares. She had to hold back a laugh.
“It’s this story,” she explained, “where this rich guy hunts people for sport.”
“Oh, crap!” Bryce said. “That better not be what this is.”
“It’s not—that’s completely ridiculous,” Parker said.
“Look, guy, you never know,” Bryce said.
Parker rolled his eyes and then the three of them laughed. Just then one of the maids entered the library with an empty tray and asked them if they wanted more beverages. All three ordered another without hesitating.
Jacqueline and Darrel were the first to find what was perhaps the mansion’s most grandiose display of luxury and excess. After a quick stroll through the gardens, and brief passes through a study and then a gaming room, which contained a pool table and several LCD TVs, they stumbled upon the mansion’s aquarium.
The aquarium room was lined with massive fish tanks from wall to wall. Each tank had a label next to it, describing the species of sea life found within its confines. There were aquarium staples, such as a tank containing a puffer fish, seahorses, and several other brightly colored tropical fish. There was a tank of piranha, one with a large octopus, and many others housing wide varieties of familiar and unfamiliar sea creatures.
But the showpiece was the huge tank at the far end of the room, taking up one entire wall. It was almost as large as the tanks at commercial aquariums. Swimming around behind the glass were some stingray, a few larger fish, and several full-grown sharks. The biggest was at least nine feet long and circled around and around in slow, smooth strokes, gliding as if it were being propelled by stealth engines rather than natural biomechanics.
“Hey, wow, it’s a bull shark,” Darrel said. “That’s pretty unusual for an aquarium. It’s actually the most dangerous shark species known. Even more dangerous than great whites.”
“Really?” Jacqueline asked, genuinely fascinated.
“Yeah, it’s the most aggressive species in the world. I’ve heard bull sharks have higher testosterone levels than any other animal in existence. Not just other sharks, but more testosterone than all animals. They’re basically the perfect killers. Aggressive, powerful, and completely remorseless.”
“How do you know all this?” Jacqueline asked with a grin. “Are you some sort of marine biologist or something?”
Darrel laughed and shook his head.
“No, Shark Week!”
Jacqueline laughed back. Her laugh was grainy and full, the sort of laugh that can only be achieved by years of smoking. But there was something about it that Darrel liked. It was loud, almost too loud, but it also was infectious. It made him want to laugh along with her.
“Yeah, I’m really just a high school science teacher and football coach,” he said.
“Don’t you do that!” she said.
“Don’t say ‘just’ a teacher,” Jacqueline scolded. “Teachers are the fabric of our society. Without them, there’d be no doctors or marine biologists or lawyers or anything like that. Be proud!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Darrel said with a grin. “What about you? What do you do?”
“Me? I’m retired, honey!” she said. “Me, working at this age, no way. But before I retired, I was just a nurse.”
Darrel opened his mouth to give her the very same lecture, but she slapped him on the arm playfully before he could say anything.
“Don’t even say it, Shark Man!” she said, and then downed the rest of her champagne.
The only guest who didn’t really explore the mansion was Guadalupe. She instead retreated to her room to take a bath. Bubble baths were one of the few luxuries she allowed herself regularly. They helped ease her mind, helped her stay focused. She knew she needed to relax and try to have fun more often, but at the same time, recreational sloth was a virtue of the unsuccessful. It was frivolous. She’d grown up poor enough to know that she never wanted to experience being poor again. The shame of having a father who was out of work slightly more often than he was drunk, which was a considerable amount of time, was worse than having no father at all in her opinion.
But the bathroom attached to her suite was immaculate, and the sight of it had made taking a predinner bath nearly impossible to resist. The tub itself was a thing of absolute beauty and perfection, unmatched by almost anything she’d ever seen before. It was a claw-foot tub, larger and deeper than any she’d been in previously. The four claw feet were made of polished silver, and even she could plainly see how expensive they were. But the tub also had Jacuzzi jets. Twenty-eight, by her count.
She’d long dreamed of owning a tub like this. Antique styling, modern amenities. That was Guadalupe’s taste in a nutshell. She knew from her own searching that tubs like these often cost at least $3,000, usually more. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford one. At least, technically that wasn’t true. She did have the money. But at the same time, such purchases were reserved for retirement. She had to prioritize her budget until then.
Regardless, the tub was here, now, in front of her. And she was going to take advantage of that as often as possible during her week’s stay at Westlake Estate.