The Deceitful One

Hiding in the shadows, Bryan slowly approached the manor and stealthily climbed over its boundary walls. After landing in the garden within the compound, he took light steps as he approached the main door of the villa.

His steps were so nimble that they didn't even leave behind any footprints on the grass. Upon arriving in front of the main door, Bryan crouched down and took out a lock pick from his pocket watch.

It took him about a minute to crack the lock and unlock the door. Very slowly, Bryan opened the main door and stepped inside the house, making sure that no sounds were produced from his movements or the creaking of the door.

After entering, he gently shut the door behind him. Then he turned around and observed the large living room which was completely dark at the moment.

The maids and servants of the house had already finished up their work for the day and gone to the servant's quarters behind the manor. So, right now the manor was completely empty, except for Jefferey Gill and his family.

As he looked around the hall, he once again made sure that no one was around. Then he silently walked towards the basement of the manor.

The basement was pretty big in size, almost twice the size of the living room. It was partitioned in two, one side was used as a wine cellar while the other side was where miscellaneous items were kept.

Bryan walked to the wine cellar and saw the tens of wine bottles kept neatly on racks, as well as a couple of large oak barrels that most likely stored either ale or wine.

He then walked to one of the barrels and placed his right hand on it. The next moment, the barrel instantly disappeared. Bryan did the same to the remaining barrels and then cast his eyes on the variety of wine bottles.

"Hehe, looks like some fine wine." Bryan chuckled as he stored all the wine bottles in his pocket watch. He then walked to the other side of the basement and looked around at all the different items strewn around.

Finding nothing of interest, he then made his way back upstairs. There were a few paintings hanging on the walls of the living room that looked pretty expensive. Bryan stored them inside his pocket watch too.

He then climbed the stairs to the second floor. There were six rooms on the second floor. Bryan entered the rooms one by one, scouring the entire floor clean. Bedsheets, pillows, chairs, tables, whatever Bryan found to be expensive, he took them.

Luckily, no one was currently sleeping in any of the rooms on the second floor. About fifteen minutes later, Bryan exited the last room and then made his way up the stairs to the third floor.

As he climbed the stairs, he thought in his heart, 'This Jeffrey guy sure is rich. Even the simplest of chairs in the house cost at least 5 pounds. Money earned at the expense of exploiting others is always easy to earn. Money earned through theft is even easier!'

Bryan's lips curled up into a smirk as he finally reached the third floor. This floor was much more spacious and had only four rooms.

He carefully opened the door to the first room on his left. After peeking in from the outside and making sure that no one was in, Bryan entered the room and looked around to find that it was the study room.

The study room at any manor could be considered to have quite significant value as this was where the owner of the house would work most of the time. Therefore, there were bound to be some important documents or even money in this room.

Bryan walked behind the study table and looked for anything of value. He found some deeds of land and property in the secret compartment of one of the drawers but ultimately decided not to take them.

If these documents were ever to be found on him at a later date, then he would surely be held suspect for the things that he was about to do to Jeffrey and Jack.

He then searched through the bookshelves to look for any secret compartments that he might have missed. And then his eyes landed on an inconspicuous book that looked a bit different.

Now, Bryan was no expert in this, this is what his intuition told him. The very same intuition that helped him identify valuable things and danger back when he used to beg on the streets.

Bryan stepped forward and tried to pull the book out. But right after he pulled it halfway through, a hidden mechanism seemed to have been activated and the entire shelf slowly began to shift to the left.

This sudden movement made quite a bit of noise in the quiet room and most likely the sound could even be heard outside of the room.

'Fuck!' Bryan cursed under his breath and cast Shadow Concealment again, instantaneously melding back into the shadows. He couldn't take the risk of being found out.

Five minutes later, when Bryan didn't hear any sound of footsteps or someone else's voice, he breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back out of the shadows.

After making sure that no one was alarmed by the previous sound, Bryan turned his attention to the secret passage that appeared after the bookshelf shifted.

The passageway was very small and one could only walk a few steps in. At the end of the secret passage, there was a big black metal box almost as big as Bryan.

He couldn't make out anything from his vision, so he returned to the study room and took a gas lantern that was kept on the table.

Then he took out a matchbox from his pocket watch, yes, after finding out that it was a space-type storage artifact and quite a big one at that, Bryan had already stored almost all the necessary day-to-day items inside it.

Bryan stepped back inside the secret passage and lit the gas lantern. In front of him, he saw a huge, black metal box that had a door attached to it. On the surface of the door were two things: a handle and a large circular, rotatable dial.

It was a safe!

Looking at the large safe in front of him, Bryan's lips curled up into a smirk as he mumbled with excitement, "Bingo!"