Chapter Four: My Empire!

Elena

The address Damian sent led me to a street with no signage and a building with no name. Just a black door with a brass handle and a man standing outside who looked at me once, checked his phone, and stepped aside without a word.

I walked in.

That morning I had woken still tasting the knowledge of it, sitting in my chest like a stone. Marcus had put something in my food. At a private dinner he arranged himself. With his own hands. For me. His wife.

Hope you gave her the dose expected for her to go faster.

I had replayed Sophia’s voice every hour since I crouched on that cold corridor floor. Calm. Practical. Like she was asking about a delivery schedule. And Marcus answering just as calmly.

They knew about the cancer. And instead of telling me, they had decided to help it along.

I got up, showered, dressed, and did not cry once.

By midday Sophia was in the kitchen like nothing had happened. She didn’t know I’d been in that corridor. She didn’t know about the USB drive sitting in my bag, small and unremarkable, carrying enough to level everything they had built.

“You look better today,” she said.

“I slept well,” I said.

Marcus texted at one. Tied up until late. Don’t wait on dinner.

Okay, I typed back. Take care of yourself.

At six-fifteen Sophia appeared in the kitchen doorway as I was leaving.

“Going out?”

“Visiting a friend.” Easy. Unbothered. “Sophia — you look exhausted. You really should rest more.”

Something shifted behind her eyes. Not quite guilt, not quite fear, living somewhere between the two.

I left before she could answer.

Inside was warm and dim, leather and something woodsy burning in a fireplace. A woman in black led me to a private room at the back. Round table. Two chairs. Lights kept low like the room understood the nature of what happened here.

He was four minutes late. I was certain it was deliberate.

Damian Cross walked in and looked at me the way you look at something you’ve encountered before in a completely different context and cannot immediately locate. Not smooth. Not performed. Just recognition without a source.

“You’re younger than I expected,” he said finally.

“You’re later than I expected,” I said.

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. More like he was logging the response.

“You have information about the Blackwood Empire.”

“I do.”

“And you want something in return.”

“Obviously.”

He studied me with those steady, unhurried eyes. “What does Marcus Blackwood’s wife want that she can’t get from Marcus Blackwood?”

I reached into my bag and set the USB drive on the table between us.

“Your hands are shaking,” he said.

He was right. The fine tremor that came and went without asking permission.

“Medical thing,” I said.

“Is it.” Not a question. He filed it away — that small, careful storage. Nothing wasted. Nothing discarded.

“All I want,” I said, “is his complete destruction. Financial, legal, personal. I want him to lose everything. Documented, prosecuted, and public. I want there to be absolutely nothing left standing.”

“That’s quite specific.”

“I’m quite specific.”

“Why now? Five years, Mrs Blackwood. You’ve had five years of access.”

I thought about Sophia’s voice in the dark. Like the woman he had stood beside at an altar was just a problem to manage on a timeline.

“Because,” I said, “I finally stopped being afraid of the answer.”

The fire crackled.

“This is enough to open an investigation,” he said, turning the drive in his hand.

“It’s enough to end him.”

“Those aren’t the same thing.”

“They will be.”

He stood — and I stood at the same moment, and he looked mildly surprised, like he had expected to be the one who decided when the meeting ended.

“You’re not afraid of me either,” he said.

“Should I be?”

The silence that followed had a different weight entirely. Then — “There was a woman. Four years ago. The Hartfield gala.” He said it slowly, carefully. “She was standing at the far window. Completely alone. Looking out at the city like she was somewhere else entirely. I spent most of the evening finding a reason to walk over there.” A pause. “By the time I crossed the room, she was gone.”

I already knew exactly what gala he meant. Exactly what window. Exactly the blue dress I had been wearing that I never wore again because Marcus said the colour washed me out.

“Because,” Damian said quietly, “you just looked at that door the same way she looked at that window.”

I walked out without answering. I could not answer.

On the empty pavement I pressed one hand flat against the cold wall and breathed.

Marcus. Two missed calls. Where are you? Come home. Now.

Then a second message. Unknown number.

Varner reported the meeting. He knows you were at Cross.

My blood went cold.

Varner. Marcus’s private investigator. The one I had planned to flip, the one I had told myself I had time to reach before he could be turned back against me.

I had run out of time.