Chapter 3: A husband’s mercy

Wren 

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap Tap tap tap.

The knocking bled up through the cold stone, vibrating against my ribs like a second heart. S.O.S. Thomas was under me, trapped in whatever forgotten hole ran beneath the glass.

I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear to the freezing floor. The chill bit my cheek. I did not move.

“Thomas?” A thread of sound aimed at the seam where stone met iron.

The tapping stopped.

Silence thick enough to choke on. I held my breath. Nothing but the low groan of the Manor’s bones under the winter wind.

Then, from high above, a different sound.

Metallic rattle down the old brass heating vent in the back wall, the gravity system that still carried residual warmth from the study. Voices. Sharp. Stripped of the soft malice they used with me.

I scrambled across the floor and pressed my head to the grate.

“…needs to be finalised before the end of the fiscal quarter, Julian. The board is already asking questions.” Harsh, parched voice. Mr Sterling, Father’s chief corporate attorney.

“The delay is unavoidable.” Julian’s warm, arrogant tone drifted down clear. “My wife’s mental state has deteriorated rapidly since the anniversary of her father’s passing. You saw Dr Vance’s reports.”

“I saw them. Extensive paranoia, manic delusions, violent outbursts. But the trust is explicit. Control of the remaining sixty per cent of the Sterling-Vane shares does not simply revert to you because she is incapacitated. It requires a total sign-off of her legal personhood.”

My fingers dug into the mesh until the brass bruised. Sixty per cent. The bulk of Father’s empire. That was what the nightmare was for. Not just to remove me. To erase my signature from the world.

“Which is why we are here.” Julian’s voice dropped into the tragic baritone he kept for audiences. “It breaks my heart, Sterling. I loved the girl she was. But the Wren I married is gone. She lives in a glass box because she is a danger to herself and everyone around her. Look at this.”

A pause.

“She wrote this yesterday in one of her lucid intervals. Full power of attorney. Complete management of the trust so I can cover her medical care. She signed it herself.”

I had signed nothing.

“The signature is remarkably steady for advanced chemical dementia,” Sterling said, cautious.

“She has good days.” The soft click of a fountain-pen cap. “On her good days she recognises the burden. She wants the weight off her shoulders. Sign the witness line. Let me protect what’s left before her delusions destroy it.”

The heavy scratch of ink on paper filled the duct.

One thousand words, ten thousand acres, millions in stock signed away while I lay in the dirt beneath his feet. They had forged my hand. Lyra, with her delicate eye, had perfected the loops of my W and the sharp slant of my r.

“There,” Sterling said. “Financial authority is complete. As of midnight you hold absolute control.”

“Thank you, old friend. You’ve done a mercy for us both.”

“And the girl?” A heavy silence. “What happens to her now?”

“Dr Vance believes a more permanent facility in the Scottish highlands would be appropriate. The air is better. She won’t last another winter. Her heart is already giving out.”

They were going to kill me.

The timeline had collapsed. Midnight. Once the transfers cleared I became an unnecessary loose end. A tragic young widow’s tragic sister who finally succumbed to her demons.

I pulled back from the vent, throat tight. The glass cell, the iron cot, the clay pitcher everything looked smaller. Stripped of identity, money, sanity in the eyes of the world.

Then the floor shuddered.

Not tapping. A sharp grinding wrench of metal against stone.

The flagstone under the back leg of the cot shifted, sliding an inch into darkness. A narrow black gap opened. Cold foul air rose stagnant river mud and raw iron.

A fingers-breadth of pale skin pushed up through the gap, holding a small rolled parchment tied with muddy twine.

I dropped to my stomach, hands shaking, and snatched it just as the stone groaned shut again.

In the corner, out of sight of the door, I unrolled the damp paper.

Soot-black words in Thomas’s jagged hand:

The key to the glass door isn’t on Julian’s belt. It’s in Father’s grave. They buried him with it.

The heavy iron bolt on the cellar door clicked. Hinges screamed as the door began to swing open.