Chapter 4 - The Price of Silence
The train ride was three hours of agonizing stillness. The carriage was mostly empty, populated by the ghosts of the night—tired workers, night-shift nurses, and the occasional runaway.
I sat by the window, watching the landscape shift from suburban sprawl to the industrial gloom of the Midwest. I had $45,000 in cash in my bag. It wasn't enough to live forever, but it was enough to start over.
Or so I thought.
A man sat down across the aisle from me. He didn't look like a Blackwood enforcer; he looked like a librarian, complete with spectacles and a thick wool coat. But his hands were wrong. His knuckles were bruised, and he kept his gaze fixed on the reflection of the car door.
"You're a long way from the estate, Chloe," he said, not turning his head.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Who are you?"
"I’m the person who’s going to make sure you stay gone," he said. "The Blackwoods have put a price on your head. Not because of the marriage. But because of what you took."
"I took nothing but my freedom," I replied.
"You took their leverage," he corrected. "The files. They know you have them."
He reached into his pocket and slid a small, silver key across the aisle. "There’s a locker at the station. It contains a new identity, a burner phone, and a map of where you need to go. If you go to the police, you die. If you go home, you die. If you trust me, you survive."
I looked at the key. This was the moment. The jump into the dark. I grabbed the key.
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"What's in it for you?"
"The Blackwoods ruined my life ten years ago," he said, finally looking at me. His eyes were hard, tired, and deeply sympathetic. "I don't care about the money. I just want to see the house of cards fall."
