บททั้งหมดของ The Wife They Wanted Dead : บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

Chapter 52The car moved through the early streets without hurry. Caius drove the way he did everything that mattered — quiet, exact, no wasted motion. I sat with my hand still pressed against the pocket where the letter rested, feeling the thin edges of the paper with every breath.Neither of us spoke for several blocks.Then Caius said, “The archive he described. I’ve heard of places like it. Private collections that exist outside every official registry. They don’t stay hidden by force. They stay hidden because the people who know about them have reasons to keep quiet.”“And the people watching it?”“Will already know we’re coming the moment we step inside the building. He wasn’t exaggerating.”I looked out the window. The city was still half-asleep, grey light sliding over glass and stone. “Then we don’t pretend we’re still only asking questions.”“No,” he said. “We don’t.”He turned onto a narrower street lined with older buildings, the kind that had survived every wave of renova

Chapter 54 The message sat on the screen between us like a blade laid flat on the table. She has the letter. We are moving on the father. I read it once. Then again. The words did not change. Caius’s thumb hovered over the phone as if he might delete it, or answer it, or crush the device entirely. He did none of those things. He simply held it so I could see, and the silence in the safe house grew dense enough to press against the walls. “They’re moving on him,” I said. My voice came out steady. I did not trust it. “Yes.” “How fast?” “Fast enough that the message arrived before we finished reading the folder.” He set the phone down. “They want us to know. That is the point of sending it this cleanly.” I walked to the window. The glass was thick, the view limited to another building’s blank wall. No one could see in. No one outside this room knew we were here. That fact felt suddenly fragile. “He’s still in the prison,” I said. “Or he was. If they’re moving on him, they eithe

Chapter 56 The interior light of the van cut a hard rectangle across the dark road. The man seated inside was restrained at the wrists and chest, head slightly bowed under the yellow glow. He was the right height. The right approximate age. For half a second the mind tried to force the shape into the one it expected. Then he lifted his face. It was not my father. I did not know him. Middle-aged, dark hair going grey at the temples, a thin cut along one cheekbone that had been cleaned but not treated. His eyes found mine through the open door and held there with the flat recognition of someone who had been told exactly who would be coming. Caius had not moved from his position between our car and the two men. His voice reached me through the earpiece, barely above a breath. “Do not get out.” The man on the left — the one who had spoken — smiled without showing teeth. “Too late for that kind of advice. She already saw enough.” I stayed in the car. My hand remained on the door h

Chapter 58 The interior office was small and deliberately bare. A desk, three chairs, a single lamp that left the corners in shadow. No certificates on the walls. No personal objects. The kind of room that existed only for conversations that should not leave a record. Valen closed the door and did not lock it. The choice was intentional. He wanted us to notice that he was not trapping us here, only containing the discussion. He gestured to the chairs. Neither Caius nor I sat. Valen remained standing as well, the desk between us like a temporary border. “Show me the image again,” he said. I held the phone out. He took it, studied the photograph in silence, then handed it back. “They have my father,” I said. “They also have a second letter from my mother addressed to him. I already have the first one she left for me. We need the location of that room before they open the second letter.” Valen’s eyes stayed on me for a moment longer than necessary. “The envelope in the photograph

Chapter 60 The old port district began where the paved roads gave up the pretence of maintenance. Valen’s car slowed first. Caius followed. The building Alaric had named sat between two derelict warehouses, its lower windows covered with metal sheeting, its upper ones dark. A faded sign for a shipping office still clung to the brick above the door, the letters half gone. We left the vehicles in the shadow of the neighbouring wall. The air smelled of river mud and rust. No streetlights reached this far. The only illumination came from a distant crane light that swung slowly over the water and then away again. Alaric moved to the side entrance and entered a code into a keypad that looked newer than the building around it. The lock released. He pushed the door open and waited for the rest of us to pass through before closing it and engaging two manual bolts. Inside, the ground floor was a single large space that had once held desks and filing cabinets. Most of the furniture was gone.