The woman didn’t answer. She just watched, and in that silence was something more terrifying than any threat. Then he began to remember. Fragments of that night. The laughter. The scream. The torn ivory dress. A cold terror began to rise from the pit of his stomach.
“Is this… is this about her? About Sarah Miller?” he stammered, his voice breaking.
The figure nodded slowly.
Paul thrashed in the chair, the ropes biting into his skin. This was it. This was revenge.
“I didn’t want to!” he screamed, tears streaming down his face. “It was all Vance! He came up with it! And Ian! I just stood there! I’ll tell everything, I’ll sign anything! Just let me go, please!”
He sobbed, pathetic and desperate, like a child. But his pleas shattered against the wall of her silence. She didn’t move. She just let him cry. Let him pour out all his fear. Let him reach the final stage of despair.
When he finally went quiet, exhausted and whimpering, she began to act. She walked to his car. She sat in the driver’s seat. She turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, a deafening sound in the enclosed space of the garage. Paul watched her, confused. What was she doing? Why?
She got out of the car, leaving the engine idling. The garage began to slowly fill with blue, suffocating exhaust. She walked calmly toward the exit. In that moment, Paul understood. His eyes widened with a terror stronger than pain, stronger than anything he’d ever felt. He muffled a scream, thrashing with new strength, trying to break the ropes, to tip the chair, to do anything. But it was useless.
She stepped out of the garage and pulled the heavy door shut, locking it from the outside. The poisonous breath of the engine filled the room. He couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t escape. He felt the air grow thick and heavy as his consciousness faded.
It looked like a tragic accident or an act of despair in a locked room. She took nothing. She touched nothing. She simply turned and vanished into the night.
Paul Thompson’s body was found by his father the next day. Worried that his son wasn’t answering his phone, he drove to the garage. The door was locked. When he opened it, the cold, damp air mixed with the sickeningly sweet smell of carbon monoxide.
He stepped inside, and his world collapsed. His son was dead. The scene was horrific, and the father, a powerful man, the CEO of a massive plant, let out a low, strangled moan and sank to the ground.
The police arrived quickly. Detective Miller, who was assigned the case, walked into the garage and felt a chill run down his spine. Suicide? Or an accident? Everything looked strange. The boy tied to a chair? Or had he just fallen and gotten tangled in some ropes? No, he was on the chair.
But there were no clues. No signs of a struggle other than the death itself. Miller suspected foul play. The case promised to be difficult. Miller interviewed the parents. The father, devastated, insisted he hadn’t noticed anything strange about his son. The mother cried and said he’d been a bit nervous lately.
However, the higher-ups decided not to cause a scandal. The son of a major CEO found dead under strange circumstances? Better to write it off as a suicide brought on by depression. Quietly, without noise. The official version was accepted. The case was closed.
But Miller didn’t believe it. He stood over the body and didn’t see a suicide. He saw a victim. He remembered Sarah Miller’s case all too well. He remembered Commissioner Sterling’s visit. He remembered the faked report. And now, one of the participants in that story was dead. A coincidence?
Miller didn’t believe in coincidences like that. He felt a hidden, cold, and merciless will behind it all. He tried to talk to his boss, Captain Reed. But Reed just waved him off:
“Miller, don’t overthink it. Thompson Senior wants this kept quiet. The kid snapped. It happens. Close the file and don’t go poking around. Are we clear?”
Miller was clear.
The news of Paul’s death shook the town’s elite. Almost everyone believed the official suicide story. Teenage depression, unrequited love, school stress—there were plenty of reasons. For most, it was just a tragedy in a wealthy family.
Ian Sterling and Vance Taylor reacted differently. Vance, smarter and more cynical, felt a prickle of cold. It was too strange a coincidence. But he pushed the thoughts away. Paul had always been the weak link, a whiner; maybe he really did crack from the fear of being caught.
Ian, however, reacted with open contempt.
“Coward!” he told Vance over the phone. “Took himself out. Good riddance. One less witness to worry about.”
Their fathers, Sterling and the Senator, also saw nothing but a tragic accident—one that, truth be told, was actually convenient for them. A dead witness is the best witness. No one linked Paul’s death to that night in the park. No one, except Detective Miller, but no one was listening to him.
The town went on living. It seemed the ripples from that terrible night in the park had settled, dissolving into time. Ian and Vance, after some initial nerves, quickly returned to their usual reckless lifestyle. The security that had been placed on them in the first few days was long gone. Everything was calm.
But Ellen wasn’t calm. She waited. She gave them time to relax. To let their guard down. To feel like the masters of the world again—invulnerable and all-powerful.
She watched them from a distance, patiently, like a spider in the corner of its web. She saw them going back to restaurants, driving girls around in their cars, burning through life. She studied their new habits. And she prepared to strike a second time. A strike that no one could write off as an accident. A strike that would make them wake up in a cold sweat of terror.
Several months passed. Summer turned into a gray, rainy autumn. A damp chill settled over the town. Ian Sterling and Vance Taylor had completely relaxed. Paul Thompson’s death, officially a suicide, had faded from memory, leaving only a slight, unpleasant aftertaste. They felt invincible again.
Ellen knew the moment had come. She could no longer rely on complex traps. The second strike had to be direct. For this, she needed a weapon. An old but reliable .45, heavy, cold, smelling of gun oil. It lay at the bottom of her bag, wrapped in an oily rag.
She didn’t intend to kill. She wanted to force a confession. To record his words on a small tape recorder she’d also brought. The gun was only to make him talk.
She knew Ian’s routine. Every Wednesday evening, he went to a private gym on the outskirts of town. It was his personal time. That Wednesday, a miserable drizzle was falling. The streets were nearly empty. Ellen waited for him in the dark parking lot behind the gym.
Around 10:00 PM, Ian came out. Relaxed, energized from his workout. He got into his car and turned the key. In that moment, the back left door opened silently. Ellen slid onto the back seat. Ian saw the movement in the rearview mirror and spun around.
“What the hell are you doing in my car?”
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