Capítulo 3: The Gardener's Secret

The fireplace in the great hall loomed like a stone beast, its mantel carved with twisting vines that seemed to writhe in the flickering candlelight. Eleanor pressed her palm against the soot-blackened bricks, her breath shallow.

The note from the night before still burned in her mind—'I know it was you'—but she forced it aside. Survival first.

"There's a pattern here," she murmured, tracing the ivy relief with her fingertip. "Violet said the earth gem is bound to this estate's foundations.

The fireplace is the heart of the house." Bass snorted from his position near the locked doors. "And you think pushing bricks will open a magical vault?

We've been at this for hours." "Shut up and let her work." Zoe stood close, her mining engineer's eyes already cataloguing the seams in the stonework. "The mortar's different here—fresher.

Someone replaced these bricks recently." Noah hovered at the edge of the light, his jaw tight. Since discovering Oliver's tattoo, he'd spoken little, his grief calcifying into a silent rage.

Eleanor caught his gaze and nodded toward the left side of the hearth. "Help me push here." Together, they pressed three bricks simultaneously—ivy leaf, acorn, and root—and the entire back wall of the fireplace ground inward, revealing a narrow stone staircase spiraling down into darkness.

A damp, mineral breath wafted up, carrying a faint sweetness of decay. "Earth gem," Bass muttered, suddenly at her elbow.

"Guess you're not just a pretty widow." Eleanor ignored him, snatching a candelabra from the mantel and leading the descent. The steps were worn concave by centuries of use, and the walls wept moisture that glistened like tears.

At the bottom, the crypt opened into a low-ceilinged chamber lined with alcoves. Iron brackets held torches that Zoe lit with brisk efficiency, revealing a space that was part mausoleum, part laboratory: old wooden crates stamped with Alistair's crest, a workbench cluttered with geological instruments, and in the center— A body swayed gently, suspended from a beam.

"Bloody hell." Bass's voice cracked. The gardener hung by a rope, his face purple and swollen, his overalls still streaked with potting soil.

Tucked into his clenched fist was a scrap of parchment. Eleanor forced herself to step forward, her heart hammering.

She pried the paper free, her fingers brushing cold, rigid skin. A single word, inked in spidery script: 'earth.' Behind her, Noah made a sound—a low, wounded groan.

He had moved to one of the alcoves and knelt, lifting something from a shallow stone basin. Bone beads, small and cylindrical, strung on a sinew cord gone brittle with age.

The design was unmistakable, etched with the same spiraling wolf motif that had haunted his dreams since the massacre of his people. "These belong to my tribe," he choked out, his hands trembling.

"The elder wore them before the hunters came. Before they—" He turned the strand over, and a dried stain flaked off, the color of old blood.

"This is proof. The one who killed them is here.

In this estate." Zoe's face went pale. "The gardener?

He was—" "No." Noah's voice carried a cold edge. "He's just another victim.

The real killer used these as a sick trophy." A whisper of sound cut through the chamber: a footstep on stone, deliberate and unhurried. Eleanor spun, the candlelight wavering as a figure emerged from the shadows of the stairwell.

Marcus, the butler, moved with a predator's grace, his impeccably tailored suit at odds with the object in his hand—a pistol, long barrel tipped with a suppressor. "None of you are innocent." His voice was calm, almost regretful.

He raised the gun, the black eye of the silencer level with Eleanor's chest. "The gardener knew too much.

He'd been hiding those beads for years, waiting for the right moment to expose the truth. I couldn't allow that." Zoe stepped in front of Noah, her hands raised.

"What truth? That you're a murderer?" Marcus's thin lips twisted.

"That your inheritance is built on a mountain of corpses. Alistair's legacy wasn't just gems—it was a network of death spanning continents.

And each of you, in your own way, has already proven you belong to it." He cocked the hammer with a soft click. "Now, the final game begins.

Move, and I'll paint these walls with your atonement." The torchlight guttered, and in that instant, Noah lunged—not at Marcus, but toward the bone beads, as if they were the only thing that mattered. But Marcus was faster.

The gun tracked his movement, and the question hung in the air like the note of a bell: whose sin would be judged first?

Kill One, Unlock One Fortune

Kill One, Unlock One Fortune

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