Chapter 841
After walking for miles, Isabella Lancaster was starving. Penniless and looking like a wreck, she knew no one would give her the time of day. She had nowhere to go, wandering the streets aimlessly. The night deepened, and the sidewalks emptied. Despite her disheveled state, she was still a stunning woman. Naturally, a beautiful girl walking alone in the dead of night drew the wrong kind of attention. A group of thugs started catcalling, trailing her with obvious malicious intent.
In the past, she would have been surrounded by bodyguards. Who would dare approach her? Terrified, Isabella stumbled toward the glowing sign of a police station, finally shaking off their predatory gazes.
Exhausted, she collapsed onto the pavement and burst into tears of sheer despair. She was out of options. Suddenly, she remembered the bloody note Agnes had slipped into her pocket. Agnes had mentioned a nest egg. She had money!
Isabella pulled out the scrap of paper. It bore a single address and a cryptic phrase: “The third red brick.” She frowned at the location. It was in the Rusty Quarters. Why would Agnes leave her money in such a place?
She took out Agnes’s battered phone. It had a couple of hundred dollars on its digital wallet. Agnes had tearfully mumbled that the password was her birthday. But Isabella, a former heiress, had never bothered to memorize a servant’s birthday. Furious, she bypassed the lock screen for the emergency navigation app and searched the address. It was over ten miles from the city center. She didn’t even have enough cash for a cab.
With no other choice, Isabella gritted her teeth and started walking. She dragged herself through the dark streets until two in the morning. Blisters formed on her heels before she finally reached the address.
The Rusty Quarters was a forgotten slum. Illegal extensions cluttered the narrow alleys, power lines tangled like spiderwebs overhead, and the air reeked of open sewage and rotting garbage. The streetlights were dead, leaving only the harsh glow of her phone screen to guide her.
Isabella was on the verge of a breakdown. She had never been exposed to such filth. This was the kind of dump Serena was supposed to rot in! Disgusted but too exhausted to care, she followed the navigation to a dark corner on the ground floor of a crumbling building.
The door was peeling, the lock rusted. Suppressing her nausea, she remembered
the note. She ran her hands over the grimy brick wall next to the door. Sure enough, the third red brick was loose. A key was hidden inside.