Chapter 3 - The Cold Room
Clara’s phone vibrated violently in her icy fingers as the screen refreshed. Beneath the horrifying image of Julian strangling Eleanor, a single text appeared: He won't stop until everyone who knows the truth is dead. Get to Blackwood Docks, Slip 4.
Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Julian had always been arrogant, a spoiled princeling living under Eleanor’s iron thumb, but patricide or matricide felt like a terrifying leap into madness. Unless Eleanor was never the true puppet master.
Clara tightened her damp coat around herself and trekked through the sodden forest path, avoiding the main estate highway where the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles wailed. An hour later, she emerged on the outskirts of the industrial district bordering the river. Rusting cranes towered like skeletal giants against the grey dawn.
Slip 4 was an abandoned boat repair warehouse, smelling of brackish water and stale diesel. Clara stepped through a partially rotted wooden door, clutching the leather journal tightly against her chest.
“You’re late,” a low, gravelly voice echoed from the shadows behind a dry-docked skiff.
A man stepped into the sliver of morning light filtering through the cracked skylights. He was tall, wearing a grease-stained canvas coat, his face marred by an old burn scar running from cheek to jawline. Clara raised a broken pipe from the floor defensively.
“Stay back. Who sent you?” she demanded.
The man ignored the weapon, casually tossing her a dry wool blanket and a bottle of water. “My name is Martin. I was your late husband’s personal driver before his car miraculously lost its brakes in Zurich.”
Clara lowered the pipe, her breath catching. “Mark’s death was an accident. The report said mechanical failure.”
“Eleanor paid the inspector fifty thousand francs to say that,” Martin said quietly, leaning against a rusted workbench. “Mark found out what his family’s pharmaceutical business was actually manufacturing in the Eastern European branches. He came home to confront them, and three days later, his brake lines were cleanly severed.”
Clara flipped open the bloodstained journal she had retrieved from the safe. Inside were pages filled with Mark’s unmistakable frantic handwriting, listing dates, shipping manifests, and bank routing numbers tied to shell corporations.
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“Mark left that safe combination with me before he flew to Switzerland,” Martin continued, watching her intently. “He knew if Eleanor ever turned on you, that journal was your only bargaining chip.”
Suddenly, the warehouse doors were blasted inward with concussive force, wooden splinters flying like shrapnel. Laser sight dots danced across the dusty air, locking onto Martin’s chest.
