CHAPTER 3: THE CLEANER IN THE SHADOWS

My sweet yet chilling whisper still hung in the suffocating air of the secret exhibition room. The slash-faced paintings scattered across the raw brick walls looked like hundreds of dark eyes silently witnessing the unraveling drama.

Ethan stared at me. The bitter, sinister smirk on his gaunt cheeks suddenly warped. His confusion vanished, replaced by an absolute, rampant fury as he realized the woman standing before him had never been an innocent victim. She was never terrified. She had never lost her memory in the naive way he had assumed.

“You bitch…”

Ethan let out a throat-shredding roar. The venomous sound bounced off the brick vaults, echoing like the screech of a wounded wild beast.

The exhaustion and agony from the gruesome injuries of the crash could no longer suppress the rage burning in his blood. Ethan lunged like an arrow. His rough, cracked hands—caked in dried blood—clamped brutally around my throat. The sheer weight of a desperate man slammed down, throwing me onto the cold, raw brick floor.

CRASH!

The glass shard hidden in my hand flew out, striking the leg of the easel with a sharp clatter before coming to rest in a dark corner.

“You have to die! You cut the brake lines! You wanted to turn me into ash just to get that 10 million dollars!” Ethan ground his teeth, jamming both thumbs deep into my windpipe with brutal force.

Suffocation struck instantly. My chest constricted, and my airway was completely cut off at the throat. My vision began to blur; fiery red spots and black streaks danced before my eyes. The foul stench of Ethan’s breath, the smell of dried blood, and the musty dampness of the basement surged directly into my brain.

I clawed wildly at his face with both hands. My fingernails dug deep into his flesh, tearing his cheeks apart and spraying fresh blood that splattered bitterly across my eyelids. But the grip of a dying man was ruthlessly powerful. My lungs screamed for oxygen. Life was slipping through my fingers inch by inch. Every second felt like an eternity.

Don’t be afraid, Emily… you can’t die here… You’ve planned everything up to this point; you can’t fall at the hands of a lowlife like him…

I tried to suppress the panic, my legs thrashing against the brick floor as my fingers scrambled to find anything that could serve as a weapon. But right at the moment I thought my skull was about to burst from oxygen deprivation, a tall, dark silhouette crashed down from behind Ethan.

SCHLICK!

A wet, gruesome sound echoed—the sound of a steel blade piercing through skin and flesh, tearing muscle, and striking the spine.

Ethan froze. His bloodshot, vein-filled eyes rolled back toward the ceiling. The brutal grip on my throat shattered like a snapped rope. His mouth opened, but no sound came out except for the bubbling pop of blood in his throat.

Julian stood behind him.

Julian’s marble-carved face was entirely devoid of emotion. Beneath the flickering yellow glow of the spotlight, he looked as dark and cold as an ancient statue. His right hand tightly gripped the handle of a stainless-steel hunting knife. The blade was buried deep into Ethan’s back, right between his shoulder blades.

Without a second of hesitation, Julian cold-bloodedly pulled the knife out.

PLUNG!

Fresh blood spattered from Ethan’s back onto the canvas of the nearest slashed painting, staining the dark acrylic streaks bright red. Ethan collapsed to the side, his body twitching a few times on the brick floor before going completely still. His ash-gray eyes remained wide open, staring at the vaulted ceiling, frozen in utter shock.

I lay on the floor, clutching my throat tightly, coughing violently. Cold gulps of air surged into my lungs, stabbing my chest like countless needles.

Julian tossed the bloodied hunting knife onto the floor. The metal clinked hollowly against the brick. He stepped forward and slowly sank to one knee. His warm hands reached out, gently lifting me into his arms. He pulled a silk-wrapped white handkerchief from his coat pocket and meticulously, softly wiped away the blood streaming down my cheeks, as if he were cleaning a precious porcelain statue that had just been soiled.

His eyes looked down at me, overflowing with distress—a dark, twisted, and madly obsessed kind of love.

“Don’t be afraid. If your hands get stained with blood, let me wipe them clean,” Julian whispered, a lingering smile dawning on his pale lips. “But if you want freedom, you have to step over his corpse.”

I rested my head against Julian’s chest. My body continued to fake violent shivers of fright, my shoulders heaving with weak, ragged breaths—a flawless performance of a victim who had just escaped the jaws of death. But beneath that fragile facade, my brain was operating at the speed of a supercomputer.

He showed up right on time. He cleaned up Ethan for me. Everything still seems to be following the trajectory I designed.

“Julian…” I whimpered, my voice raspy and frail. My blood-stained hand reached up, gently touching his sharp jawline. “You… you saw everything? You know… I was the one who cut the brake lines?”

Julian looked deep into my eyes. His hazel eyes were bottomless, devoid of any surprise. He reached out, gently stroking the messy strands of hair clinging to my temple.

“I know, Emily. I knew before I even brought you back to this mansion,” Julian spoke in a low, melancholic tone, heavy with a gloomy emotion. “I knew you secretly bought a 10-million-dollar life insurance policy. I knew you loosened the brake lines on the Volvo. I knew you were a ruthless manipulator hiding behind an innocent facade…”

He leaned down, pressing a long, burning kiss onto my forehead. A drop of his cold sweat fell onto my cheek, mixing with the dried blood.

“My obsessive love isn’t about caging you in a glass display, but about turning myself into the ultimate grave for your crimes. I will take all the blame. I will tell the police that I was the one who cut the brakes, that I was the one who murdered Ethan. You just need to be a little innocent lamb, obediently waiting while I clean up everything. We will start over somewhere no one knows us.”

His confession rang out like a twisted hymn in the bloody room. I looked at him, tears streaming down my cheeks—false tears of “profound emotion.”

I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, burying my face into his shoulder to hide the sinister smile that had just flickered across my lips. “You’re crazy, Julian… but I love you. We’ll leave here together.”

Julian smiled in satisfaction. He stood up, carefully setting me down on a dry wooden chair. He walked over to Ethan’s corpse, pulled a large, gray-blue tarp from the corner of the room, and wrapped it tightly around Ethan’s body. The sound of the tarp scraping against the floor and the heavy dragging of the corpse ripped through the quiet basement.

He dragged the body out into the hallway leading straight to the garage, where a black Range Rover was already idling, spewing gray exhaust into the winter night’s cold.

Three in the morning. The snowstorm over Aspen reached the peak of its frenzy.

The winding, steep mountain road leading down to the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office was enveloped in a dense fog of snow. The outside temperature had dropped below minus 22 degrees Celsius. The wind howling through the Range Rover’s window seams sounded like thousands of demons screaming for vengeance. Snow fell heavily, caking the windshield, forcing the wipers to work at full capacity, producing a steady, heavy swish… swish…

Julian was focused on driving. His black leather-gloved hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, his hollow eyes monitoring every slippery, icy turn. On the back seat, Ethan’s body lay neatly under the canvas tarp, silent and cold as a block of ice.

I sat in the passenger seat, wrapped tightly in a long black puffer coat. My head rested against the freezing windowpane, but my eyes were far from asleep. Through the reflection on the glass, I covertly tracked every single one of Julian’s movements, as well as his iPhone sitting on the center console, plugged into a charging cable.

My calculations had never stopped.

Julian claimed he would take the fall for me, but in my world, trust was a deceitful luxury. I needed to check his phone. I needed to ensure he wasn’t keeping any video or audio recordings of my confession in the gallery room. I had to be the sole person holding the safety harness.

“Julian…” I called out, my voice trembling and frail like a candle flicker in the wind. “I’m so cold and shaking… Could you turn up the heat?”

“Of course, my love,” Julian replied softly, without a trace of suspicion. He reached out his right hand, lowering his head slightly to adjust the climate control dial on the lower center console.

Right in that half-second when his eyes left the icy road—

My hand darted across the center console like a venomous snake. I snatched Julian’s phone, quickly pulling it toward myself and concealing it beneath the light fleece blanket draped over my lap.

Taking advantage of his distraction, I used my index finger—which carried a trace of sweat and faint blood from Julian when I embraced him in the basement—to press against the sensor, or quickly typed in the six-digit passcode. The screen lit up brightly in the dark cabin.

The cool blue light illuminated my face. I immediately opened the Photos and Voice Memos apps. Empty. No incriminating videos or recordings.

I frowned. Instinctive paranoia pushed me to swipe over to the Messages app.

The most recent conversation was open. And the moment my eyes landed on the blue text bubbles glowing on the screen, every drop of blood in my body drained away. My heart skipped a painful beat. The freezing gale outside felt as if it had breached my chest, instant-freezing every blood vessel.

It was an automated voice message paired with a live GPS location, sent out exactly 15 minutes ago—right when Julian carried me from the art room into the car.

Recipient: PITKIN COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE / FBI SPECIAL AGENT MICHAEL.

The text was sharp, unwavering, and clear in every single word:

“This is Julian Vance. I am currently transporting murder suspect Emily Carter along with the body of victim Ethan Carter in a black Range Rover, license plate 7X89. She has personally confessed to cutting the brake lines and staging the accident in the basement art gallery. Set up a roadblock to apprehend us at Icy Slope No. 9.”

A fatal blow slammed right into the back of my neck, shattering my arrogance and the illusion of being in control.

I sat frozen solid in the passenger seat. The phone trembled violently in my hand, reflecting my wide, terror-stricken eyes.

Julian Vance… he wasn’t a twisted, obsessed lover! He was never manipulated or led by the nose by me! He never intended to take the blame for me or flee to another country together!

Everything… the entire act from Chapter 1 until now—swapping his identity with my husband’s, hooking me up to IV drips, hiding Ethan in the trunk, constructing that gallery room with slashed paintings—it was NEVER a case of deranged Yandere obsession!

He was an undercover investigator! Or even more horrifying, he was the older brother of the victim in the insurance murder scheme I successfully pulled off three years ago!

He knew I suffered from schizophrenia and triggered a self-defense amnesiac response whenever I experienced severe trauma. He knew that if he backed me into a legal corner from the start, I would use my psychiatric record to escape conviction. So, he constructed this “glass cage,” pretended to be an obsessed stalker, and used IV drugs and psychological terror to force my brain into “re-activating” its murderous instincts. He had lured me into uttering the confession with my own mouth in the gallery room—where he had already installed a live-streaming wiretap connected directly to the Federal Police!

He had turned all my confidence, my manipulation, and my triumphant smiles into the very evidence that would condemn me!

The person holding the puppet strings in this game… had never been me!

“What are you looking at, Emily?”

Julian’s voice echoed.

This time, it carried no fake gentleness, warmth, or gloomy devotion. His tone was flat, razor-sharp, and held the absolute authority of a predator that had finally driven its prey into a steel cage.

I slowly raised my eyes to look over.

Julian was still steering with his left hand. His right hand had drawn a pair of gleaming steel handcuffs from underneath the driver’s seat. He looked at me, his eyes devoid of infatuation or pity. Those hazel eyes were now the eyes of a ruthless judge.

The Range Rover began its descent down the steepest, most dangerous icy slope of the Aspen mountains—Icy Slope No. 9. Up ahead in the distance, through the blinding fog of snow and dark pine trees, the flashing red and blue lights of the police blockade began to emerge.

“Game over, Emily,” Julian glanced at me, the smile on his marble-carved lips now one of absolute, undisputed victory. “Welcome to your life sentence.”