All Chapters of The Price of Ashbourne : Chapter 41 - Chapter 49

Chapter 41The woman closed the door and slid the wooden bolt into place. The latch settled with a soft, practiced sound. Elena watched the movement, the quiet finality of it settling over the small room like a change in the air.“Why did you lock it?”The woman rested her hand on the bolt a moment longer before turning. “Because your father taught me never to leave this door open when an Ashbourne was looking for you.”Elena went still. Outside, the late light filtered through the thin curtains in pale bars across the floorboards. Inside, everything had gone quieter.“You knew they were looking for me?”“I knew they would eventually.”The woman crossed to the table and set down the basin she had been carrying. Water shifted inside it. Elena barely noticed. Her attention stayed fixed on the older woman’s face.“You knew who I was when I walked in.”“Yes.”“How?”The woman pulled out the chair opposite and sat. She studied Elena longer than politeness required. “You look like Hart. And

Chapter 43The bus was already pulling away when Elena reached the roadside. She lifted one hand, then let it fall. There was no point chasing it. Dust hung in the air where the vehicle had been, settling slowly over the road and coating the hem of her skirt and the sandals she had borrowed from the woman at the well.For a moment she stood still and considered turning around. Back to the little house. Back to the woman who had known her before Elena had known herself. Back to the small, contained life she had built without understanding how much of it rested on a carefully constructed absence. The thought had a quiet pull to it—the safety of remaining where the truth had already been spoken and required nothing further from her.Then she looked down at her hands. They were trembling, though not from fear alone. She was tired in a way that reached past the body. Tired of waking to another missing piece of her life. Tired of people looking at her as though they carried knowledge she di

Chapter 45 By the time Elena reached Ashbourne Holdings, she had almost turned around twice.The building stood across the street, its glass façade catching the morning light. People moved through the revolving doors in dark suits, carrying coffee cups and phones, already absorbed in whatever waited for them upstairs.Elena stayed where she was for another moment.Then she adjusted the cap over her hair and crossed the street.She had changed before leaving the hotel.Her hair was tucked into a low knot beneath a plain black cap. A loose jacket covered her clothes, and the mask across her face hid most of it. Nothing about the way she dressed suggested the woman who had recently been living under the Ashbourne name without even knowing it.She had brought copies of Hart's documents.The originals were locked away in the hotel.So was the photograph.She wasn't giving anyone here more than she had to.Inside, the lobby was already busy.A security guard glanced at her when she entered

Chapter 47Austin Blackwood stood at the window of his private office with his back to the room, the city spread beneath him in hard lines of glass and steel. Late light cut across the sharp angle of his jaw and the cold set of his mouth. He had always carried himself with a controlled elegance that made people step aside without understanding why. Today that elegance looked thinner, worn at the edges by weeks of unfinished business.The search had taken a toll.There were shadows beneath his eyes that sleep had not erased. His shirt remained crisp, his cufflinks exact, but the stillness in his posture was no longer the stillness of confidence. It was the stillness of a man who had spent too many days waiting for a problem to resolve itself and watching it refuse. His dark hair, usually precise, showed the faint disorder of a hand run through it more than once. When he finally turned from the window, the expression on his face was not open anger. It was something quieter and more dang

Chapter 49 The address Richard Cole had given Elena led to a quiet residential street on the other side of the city.She checked the number on her phone before getting out of the taxi.The house was older than the ones around it, with faded paint around the windows and a small garden that had clearly seen better days. There was no sign outside, nothing to suggest that anyone connected to the Ashbourne family had ever lived there.Elena took the folded paper from her bag.Samuel Reed.She had spent most of the journey wondering what she would say if she actually found him.Now that she was standing in front of his door, she had nothing prepared.She knocked.There was no answer.She knocked again.A few seconds later, footsteps approached from inside.The door opened.An older man stood there, perhaps in his seventies, wearing a plain shirt with reading glasses hanging from the collar. He looked at Elena without saying anything.“I’m looking for Samuel Reed.”“You found him.”Elena ti