Chapter 6 - The Decaying Estate
The car climbed away from the gleaming glass towers of downtown Seattle, winding its way up the older, steeper hills where the Victorian houses clung to the slopes like forgotten relics of a bygone era.
Here, the streets were narrow, arched over by ancient maples whose leaves had turned a bruised shade of yellow and brown. The houses were grand once—tall, timber-framed structures with wraparound porches and intricate gingerbread trim—but many of them had been carved up into cheap apartments or left to the mercy of the elements.
Marcus pulled the town car to a smooth stop in front of a peeling, pale-blue Victorian house that sat at the very end of a dead-end street.
The paint was flaking off the porch railings like dry skin. The small front yard was overgrown with wild ivy and wet ferns. A single, dim yellow light flickered from the second-floor window, casting a lonely glow against the gray afternoon rain.
Junie clutched the bakery box to her chest. Her heart suddenly began to beat a little faster.
“This is it,” she whispered, her voice dropping. “Grandma doesn't like visitors. She says visitors bring questions, and questions cost money we don't have.”
“Your grandmother and I have mutual acquaintances from a very long time ago,” Colton said, opening his own door and stepping out into the rain. Before a single drop could touch his shoulders, Marcus was there, holding a massive black umbrella over his head.
Colton walked around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Junie, shielding her with the edge of the umbrella as she hopped out in her brand-new sheepskin boots. They didn't make a sound on the wet gravel.
They climbed the rotting wooden steps of the porch. The floorboards groaned beneath their weight. Colton didn't bother knocking; he pushed the heavy, brass-knobbed front door open. It gave way with a long, mournful creak.
The interior of the house smelled of old paper, peppermint tea, and damp plaster. A steep, narrow staircase wound upward into the shadows, carpeted in a faded floral runner that had worn thin decades ago.
“Grandma?” Junie called out, her voice echoing in the hollow hallway. “Grandma, I’m home! And... and I brought a friend!”
From the top of the stairs, a faint, raspy cough echoed down.
“Junie?” a frail, trembling voice answered. “Child, what took you so long? The... the rain is too cold for you to be out wandering the district...”
A figure appeared at the top of the landing.
Elena Rivera looked like a ghost of the architect she once was. Her silver hair was tied back in a messy bun, held together by a wooden chopstick. She wore a faded plaid flannel shirt over a thin turtleneck, her shoulders visibly hunched as she pressed one hand heavily against the peeling wallpaper for support.
Her sunken eyes swept down the staircase, landing first on Junie in her pristine, expensive wool coat, and then slowly rising to meet the tall, imposing figure of Colton Vale standing beside her in an immaculate cashmere overcoat.
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Elena froze. The breath caught in her throat.
“Colton Vale?” she whispered, her voice cracking with a mixture of shock and disbelief. “What... what is the master of downtown doing in a ruin like this?”
