Chapter 4 - The House on the CliffThe ambulance ride was a nightmare of violent bumps and suffocating darkness. I was strapped down tightly inside the back of an unmarked vehicle, the rhythmic swaying of the suspension making my broken bones scream in agony. I tried to scream, tried to rattle the straps, but the men in the front seat had turned up the radio to drown out any noise I made.
When the vehicle finally stopped, the doors swung open, but the cool, sterile scent of a hospital was missing. Instead, the heavy, salty smell of the ocean hit my lungs.
We were at the cliffside estate—the very house where I had been pushed off the balcony.
They wheeled me through the rear service entrance, bypassing the grand foyer, and straight down into the damp, stone-walled basement. The air down here was thick with the smell of old cedar and damp earth. They parked my bed next to a large, wrought-iron storage gate, locked the wheels, and walked away without a word, plunging the room into near-total darkness.
Think, Claire, think, I scolded myself, fighting back the rising panic. Mason knows where I am. He has the search warrant. He’s coming.
Hours ticked by in absolute silence. The only sound was the distant, crashing roar of the waves against the cliffs outside.
Around midnight, heavy footsteps echoed down the concrete stairs.
A light flickered on, casting long, grotesque shadows against the stone walls. Ethan walked into the basement. He had shed his suit jacket; his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his tie was loosened. In his hand, he held a glass of dark amber scotch, the ice clinking softly against the crystal.
He stopped a few feet from my bed and looked down at me with an expression of profound, clinical disappointment.
"You really should have stayed in the hospital, Claire," he said smoothly, taking a slow sip of his drink. "You always were entirely too curious for your own good. Just like Emily."
"You killed her, didn't you?" I spat out, my voice trembling with rage. "She caught you embezzling funds, or she wanted a divorce, and you threw her off that balcony just like you tried to do to me."
Ethan smiled—a cold, terrifying grin that reached all the way to his eyes. "Emily lacked imagination. She thought marriage was about love and compromise. She didn't understand that some people are destined to build empires, while others are simply collateral damage."
"And your mother?" I asked. "Was she your accomplice, or just your executioner?"
"Mother was the architect," Ethan replied casually, swirling the scotch in his glass. "She built this family's reputation from the gutter, and she'll be damned if some penniless nobody from the suburbs is going to destroy it with a divorce settlement. You saw too much, Claire. You found the bank statements in my briefcase, didn't you?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
Ethan set his glass down on a nearby crate and stepped closer to my bed. His expression darkened, all pretense of civility vanishing.
"It's a tragedy about your spine, really," he whispered, reaching out to stroke the edge of my head brace. "The doctors said you might never walk again anyway. A tragic accident during an unapproved transfer... security footage will show you tried to escape your caregivers and fell down the basement stairs. It's poetic, really. Like poetry repeating itself."
May you like
He raised his hands slowly, hovering them just above my throat, ready to finish what his mother had started in the ICU.
"Say hello to Emily for me," he whispered.
