Chapter 4: The Man in the Maroon Coat
The interior was colder than the storm outside. The hallway smelled overpoweringly of bleach and ozone, a sterile stench masking decades of rot.
Flickering fluorescent tubes hummed overhead, casting sickly green light across peeling walls. Adam moved with silent, deliberate steps down the corridor toward the central elevator shaft.
Suddenly, a metallic chime echoed through the vacant hall.
The stainless-steel elevator doors parted. Standing inside was a tall, grey-haired man in a crisp burgundy double-breasted orderly uniform with polished brass buttons. A pair of heavy key rings dangled from his belt, and his thin lips curled into an unsettling, practiced grin.
Marcus.
"You're not on the visitor registry, Mr. Vance," Marcus said, his voice smooth, completely devoid of surprise. "Victoria called ahead. She was quite distraught."
Adam didn't flinch. "Where is she?"
"Where she belongs," Marcus replied casually, stepping out of the elevator cab with his hands clasped behind his back. "Elena was an inconvenience to everyone. Victoria offered her peace—a quiet, continuous slumber. Why disrupt an arrangement that keeps everyone wealthy and happy?"
"You poisoned my wife and stole my daughter's mother for money," Adam said, his voice dropping into an icy register of pure loathing.
"Money keeps the lights on," Marcus chuckled dryly, reaching toward a heavy baton secured at his side. "And right now, it buys your silence."
Before Marcus could draw the weapon, Adam surged forward. Three years of grief, guilt, and buried fury detonated in a single motion. He caught Marcus by the lapels of his pristine maroon coat and slammed him against the elevator's steel door frame.
May you like
The air rushed out of the orderly's lungs in a choked gasp.
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