Chapter 14 - The Recluse of Blackwood
The name Arthur Sterling sent an electric shock through the room.
"Sterling?" Julian repeated, his brow furrowed in disbelief. "Arthur Sterling was the original owner of Sterling Shipping. The dynasty that went belly-up in the late nineties after a catastrophic regulatory scandal. Everyone thought he died in a boating accident off the coast of Maine."
"Eleanor writes that he didn't die," I said, reading directly from the journal. "He went into hiding under federal witness protection after giving testimony against the Vance family’s overseas shipping network. But before he vanished, he retained the original countersigned deeds of Aegis Holdings. If Helena is using that 1994 lien now, she’s banking on the belief that Arthur is dead and that his sealed archives were shredded."
"Where is he?"
I looked at the final line of Eleanor’s entry. It was an address, written in faint pencil: *Cottage 4, Blackwood Cove. Ask for the watchmaker.*
"Blackwood Cove is only forty miles north," Julian said, checking his watch. It was eight-fifteen in the evening. "We have less than four hours before midnight. If Judge Vance’s order takes full effect, the sheriff will be required to serve an eviction notice by tomorrow noon."
"Then we leave now."
We took Julian’s battered pickup truck instead of my car, slipping out the service gate behind the orchards to avoid any watchers Helena might have posted along the main driveway. The night was thick with summer mist, the road winding through dark pine forests that choked out the moonlight.
As Julian drove, his jaw tight and eyes scanning every curve of the highway, I gripped Eleanor’s journal tightly in my lap. I thought about the day of my wedding—the hideous mockery of it all. Garrick standing at the altar with that practiced, condescending grin; Victoria whispering venom behind her lace fan; and then the massive, five-foot tiered confection falling, shattered deliberately by Garrick’s groomsmen, coating me in glass and sickeningly sweet royal icing while the crowd gasped and laughed.
They had thought that public humiliation would break me, make me sign away my rights, and leave me destitute. They had underestimated Eleanor’s loyalty. And they had vastly underestimated Julian.
"Clara," Julian said softly, breaking the tense silence of the cab. He reached across the console, his hand covering mine over the journal. "Whatever happens at Blackwood Cove... we will not lose High Ridge. I promise you."
"It’s not just the house, Julian," I said, my voice catching slightly. "It’s the first place where I haven't felt like a prop in someone else’s play. It’s where I found my voice. And where I found you."
He turned his head briefly, his dark eyes fierce with emotion. "Then we burn their paper empire to the ground before we let them touch an inch of it."
Forty minutes later, the salt air hit us. Blackwood Cove was a tiny, forgotten fishing hamlet clinging to rocky bluffs. At the very edge of a decaying wooden pier stood Cottage 4, a weathered cedar-shake shingle home with a single, dim yellow light glowing in the front window.
We stepped out into the biting ocean wind. I knocked three times on the salt-bleached oak door.
For nearly a minute, there was only the crash of the surf against the rocks below. Then, the heavy scrape of a deadbolt sliding back.
The door opened two inches, restrained by a thick iron security chain. An old man with a weathered, leathery face and a thick white beard stared out at us, his gray eyes sharp as surgical steel. In his hand, half-hidden behind the frame, was the dull blue sheen of a revolver.
"The shop is closed," the man said in a low, gravelly rasp. "Go away."
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"We aren't looking for a watch, Mr. Sterling," I said, stepping forward so the light from the lantern fell across my face. "Eleanor sent us. Aegis Holdings has defaulted, and Helena has come to collect."
***
