Chapter 18: The Ghost of Blackwood Estate
Chapter 18: The Ghost of Blackwood Estate
Midnight cast long, jagged shadows over the decaying gates of the abandoned Blackwood Estate—the very place where Elena’s father had lost his life, and where the dark history of the Vance family was first written.
The sleek black Mercedes pulled off the unpaved mountain road, its headlights cutting through the dense, creeping fog. Elena stepped out alone into the biting chill of the night, wearing a heavy black wool coat, her footsteps crunching rhythmically against the gravel drive.
She didn't bring Marcus. This wasn't a corporate takeover or a federal sting; it was a reckoning with ghosts.
The grand manor looked even more spectral in the moonlight, its boarded-up windows and overgrown ivy bearing silent witness to the secrets buried within its walls. Elena walked straight up the stone steps, her fingers tracing the heavy iron ring of the front door. With a firm, decisive push, the rusted lock gave way, and the heavy oak door swung inward with a mournful groan.
Inside, the air smelled of damp wood, aged paper, and dust. She walked through the grand foyer, her eyes adjusting to the dim moonlight filtering through the shattered skylight above.
"I knew you’d eventually find your way back here, Elena," a raspy, frail voice echoed softly from the shadows of the grand staircase.
May you like
Elena stopped dead in her tracks. From the darkness beneath the landing, a tall, gaunt figure stepped into the pale moonlight. It was a face long thought dead, buried under a false-name obituary and a closed-casket funeral fifteen years ago.
It was Jonathan Vance—her grandfather’s estranged younger brother, the man who had supposedly died in a mysterious yacht explosion off the coast of Monaco when Elena was just a child.
