Chapter 3 - The Three Words in the Cold
The cold did not set in gradually; it struck like an iron hammer.
Willa’s head throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse.
She had been thrown into the back of an unmarked van with a burlap sack over her face.
When the sack was ripped off, she found herself surrounded by wet, rotting timber and the unmistakable stench of stagnant river water.
She was inside the old boathouse at the southern edge of the Baron estate cove.
The structure had been abandoned and heavily chained since the night Cecilia Baron drowned seven years prior.
Elias had declared the boathouse off-limits under penalty of execution.
Yet here she was, shivering uncontrollably on the damp floorboards.
Her woolen sweater was torn down the left shoulder, and her cheekbone stung where one of the men had struck her with an open palm.
Her hands were tied behind her back with industrial zip ties that cut into her wrists every time she moved.
The two men were standing over a large, fifty-five-gallon steel drum that had been dragged into the center of the room.
The drum was filled to the brim with freezing water drawn directly from the cove.
One of the men, a thick-necked brute with scarred knuckles, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her upright.
A wide strip of heavy duct tape was plastered across her mouth, suffocating her frantic gasps.
“Where is the cloud backup?” the man grunted into her ear.
Willa could only shake her head, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on her face.
They did not wait for an answer.
The two men hoisted her off her knees and plunged her face-first into the steel barrel.
The shock of the icy water paralyzed her lungs instantly.
Darkness pressed against her eyes, and her lungs burned for oxygen that wasn't there.
She thrashed her legs against the floor, but the men held her down with the casual weight of slaughterhouse workers.
Just as the black edges of unconsciousness began closing in, they hauled her upward by the hair.
Willa choked, coughing violently behind the sodden tape, water pouring out of her nostrils.
“Last chance, little girl,” the man growled.
“Did you send the manifest to the state police or to an outside cloud drive?”
Before she could even gesture, the heavy wooden doors of the boathouse imploded inward.
The sound was like a thunderclap ripping through the enclosed space.
Splintered oak flew across the concrete threshold as a figure moved through the doorway with terrifying velocity.
It was Elias Baron.
He was not wearing his overcoat; his charcoal suit was soaked in rain, and his eyes were completely devoid of humanity.
The second guard reached for a pistol beneath his jacket, but Elias was already on him.
Elias struck the man’s throat with the heel of his hand, followed by a brutal elbow strike to the temple that dropped the man like a felled tree.
The thick-necked guard holding Willa scrambled backward, drawing a short blade from his belt.
Elias did not even blink.
He sidestepped the wild slash, caught the man’s wrist in a vise-like grip, and snapped the bone over his knee with a sickening crack.
The knife clattered to the wet floorboards.
Elias drove his fist into the man’s solar plexus, then slammed his skull against the rim of the steel barrel.
The guard collapsed into the murky puddle, motionless.
Silence crashed back into the boathouse, broken only by the sound of Elias’s ragged, furious breathing.
He turned slowly toward Willa.
She was slumped on her knees against the base of the barrel, trembling so violently that her teeth clicked together.
Elias dropped to both knees in front of her, his hands hovering over her bruised face.
“Willa,” he whispered, his voice shaking with a rare, terrifying fracture of composure.
He reached out with steady fingers and peeled the duct tape from her swollen lips.
Willa broke into a convulsive fit of coughing, spitting brackish water onto his expensive suit.
Elias pulled a tactical blade from his pocket and cleanly severed the zip ties binding her wrists.
Her numb, blue hands dropped into her lap.
“Who brought you here?” Elias demanded, his voice low, vibrating with suppressed slaughter.
“Willa, look at me. Who violated this house?”
Willa forced her chin upward.
Her vision was blurred with salt, tears, and exhaustion.
She looked into the gray eyes of the most dangerous man in Maryland and parted her split lips.
“She ordered it.”
The three words hung in the damp air like frozen needles.
Elias stiffened, his entire posture freezing into stone.
At that exact second, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed across the wooden ramp outside.
Sloan Prescott appeared in the shattered doorway of the boathouse.
She was wrapped in a black trench coat, her hair slightly damp from the rain, her face a mask of breathless concern.
“Elias!” Sloan cried out, rushing forward two steps before stopping abruptly.
“My God, what happened here? I heard the gate alarm go off from the main house!”
Elias rose slowly from the floor, towering over both women.
His hands were stained with rain and the blood of the men lying at his feet.
He turned his gaze toward his fiancée.
The silence between them stretched so taut that the dripping of water from the barrel sounded like a ticking clock.
“What are you doing at Cecilia’s boathouse, Sloan?”
Sloan’s eyes flicked to Willa, then to the unconscious men, then back to Elias’s frozen expression.
“I followed the security feed, Elias. Your secretary... she was caught stealing files from the safe this morning.”
“I came down here to stop them before they hurt her!”
May you like
Willa leaned against the cold metal of the barrel, her breath rattling in her chest.
The trap was closing, and the game had officially begun.
