Chapter 424
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Chapter 424:
She walked into the bedroom. She stripped off her stained pajamas and pulled on a thick black cashmere turtleneck and a long, heavy black wool trench coat, dressing with the solemn, mechanical precision of a woman preparing for a funeral she was seven years late to.
She grabbed her car keys and her leather handbag.
She took the elevator down to the underground garage. It was four in the morning. Manhattan was dead and silent.
Carmen climbed into her black Porsche Cayenne. The leather was freezing. She started the engine, its roar echoing off the concrete walls.
She drove up the ramp and merged onto the empty, dark streets of Chelsea.
Ten blocks down, she slammed the brake. The SUV lurched to a halt in front of a brightly lit twenty-four-hour luxury florist.
Carmen pushed through the glass door. The overwhelming smell of damp earth and blooming lilies hit her immediately.
She walked straight to the refrigerated section and seized an entire bundle of pure, flawless white roses — not a single drop of color on them. The color of innocence. The color of a soul that never got to live.
She left a hundred-dollar bill on the counter without looking at the cashier and walked back out into the freezing wind.
She placed the white roses gently on the passenger seat, put the car in drive, and merged onto the highway heading north toward the Hudson Valley.
D𝘰w𝗻𝗅𝗈𝖺𝖽 р𝖣𝖥s 𝗳re𝗲 𝗈𝗻.со𝗺
For two straight hours, the car was completely silent. The only sound was the robotic voice of the GPS navigation. Carmen stared blankly at the dark asphalt illuminated by her headlights, hot silent tears spilling continuously down her cheeks and dripping onto the leather steering wheel.
By six in the morning, a thick, heavy fog had rolled off the Hudson River, swallowing the landscape.
The Porsche crunched slowly over a gravel road. The GPS announced she had arrived.
Carmen put the car in park and looked out through the windshield.
Through the dense, swirling gray fog, a massive rusted wrought-iron gate materialized. It was chained tightly shut, the heavy padlock corroded and unyielding.
Carmen killed the engine. She took the white roses and stepped out into the morning.
The freezing air bit into her lungs. The grass beneath her leather boots was soaked with icy dew. The air smelled bitter — wet pine needles and decaying leaves.
She walked along the perimeter until she found a section of old stone wall that had collapsed under the weight of ancient, twisting ivy. She climbed carefully over the jagged rocks and stepped onto the hallowed ground.
Carmen moved through the fog like a ghost, her eyes darting frantically between rows of dark, wet headstones.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Then she stopped.
Fifty yards ahead, partially obscured by twisting vines and thick mist, a tall stone figure loomed in the gray light — an angel, its face buried in its hands, weeping over a blank, unmarked slab of granite.
Carmen’s breath caught in her throat. Her legs went numb.
She had found him.
Carmen’s expensive leather boots sank into the wet, rotting leaves.