Chapter 32
The village of Blackwood was a postcard of English tranquility, but to Julian, driving his obsidian sedan through the narrow lanes, it felt like a gauntlet. Every stone wall and thatched roof seemed to be closing in, a physical manifestation of the lie he had allowed to fester. Siena was gone. The silence she had left behind in the master suite was louder than any shout. He could still smell the faint, earthy scent of her perfume—the scent of the Rossi mill—intermingled with the cold, sterile air of the "Hollow Ghost" he was rapidly becoming again. He pulled up to The Blackwood Inn, a fourteenth-century pub with low ceilings and floors that tilted with the weight of age. He didn't check his reflection in the rearview mirror. He didn't care that his charcoal turtleneck was rumpled or t
- Writer
