The Alps rose like a forbidding dream outside the train window—jagged peaks piercing a sky of hard, glacial blue, valleys so deep they seemed to swallow light. I was alone in a first-class compartment, the persona of Elena Vance wrapped around me as snugly as the tailored trench coat I wore. In my bag, next to the velvet box, was a slim dossier and the secure phone. Karl was not with me. His presence would have shattered the illusion. Instead, a local, discreet driver arranged by a Voss-affiliated agency would meet me at the station in Montreux. The puppet master was pulling the strings, and I had to dance convincingly.
Wen Jingshen had been a storm of controlled tension before my departure. The war room atmosphere had lasted two more days, during which we dissected every known detail about Elara, about the pathologist's report (still elusive), and about Roland Voss's known methods. We had crafted my email together, a masterpiece of wide-eyed scholarly admiration and empathetic curiosity. Voss's response had been swift, offering not just an introduction, but a "modest grant" to support my "independent research," and logistical help for the Swiss trip. The trap was set, and I was walking into its prettiest, most gilded chamber.
The last thing Wen Jingshen said to me, his hand gripping my shoulder at the private airfield, was not a command from the contract. It was low, urgent, stripped bare. "Listen more than you speak. She is a web of lies and truth spun together over decades. Trust nothing. And come back."
The come back had vibrated with a fear he could no longer conceal.
Now, the train plunged into a tunnel, plunging the compartment into roaring darkness for a full minute. It felt like an omen.
The car waiting for me was a non-descript Mercedes. The driver, a man with a polite, closed face, loaded my single suitcase. The route took us along the sun-dazzled shore of Lake Geneva, then began to climb narrow, winding roads into the pre-Alps. The landscape grew wilder, the houses more scattered, fortified by stone and silence.
Elara Harrington, now Contessa Elara di Montefiore (though the title was as hollow as her husband's fortune), lived in a châlet that was less a cozy cottage and more a grim, timbered fortress clinging to a mountainside. It had a spectacular, dizzying view of the valley and the distant lake—a view that felt less like a privilege and more like a sentence.
A severe-looking housekeeper, her face as lined and weathered as the timber, showed me into a cavernous living room. It was cold, despite a fire struggling in a large stone hearth. The room was a museum to a gilded, ghost-filled past: faded silk wallpaper, heavy velvet drapes bleeding color, and vitrines filled with porcelain figurines and tarnished silver. The air smelled of woodsmoke, dust, and a faint, sweet trace of decay.
She entered silently. I had seen photos of the vibrant, wild-eyed beauty. The woman before me was her haunting. She was painfully thin, wrapped in a shawl of intricate lace over a high-necked black dress. Her white hair was swept into a loose, elegant knot, and her eyes, the same shape as Wen Jingshen's but clouded with a milky, feverish intensity, fixed on me instantly.
"So," she said, her voice a dry rustle, her English accented with Italian and French cadences. "You are the little scholar who feels sorry for me." There was no warmth, only a sharp, probing curiosity.
"Contessa," I inclined my head, keeping my posture respectful but not subservient. "Thank you for agreeing to see me. I am Elena Vance. My interest is in the social histories embodied by jewelry. Your story… and your sister's… is profoundly compelling."
"Was," she corrected, gliding to a chair by the fire and gesturing for me to sit opposite. "It was our story. Now it is just mine. And his." She didn't specify who 'he' was—her nephew, or the ghost of her sister. "Roland says you have a sympathetic ear. That you see the… injustice."
I took out a notebook and a simple voice recorder. "May I?"
She waved a dismissive, bony hand. "Do as you wish. It changes nothing."
I started with safe, academic questions: her memories of the Duval maison, the commissioning of the necklaces, the social world they inhabited. She answered in sharp, vivid vignettes, her words painting a picture of relentless comparison, of Rosalind's "maddening perfection," of the pressure to be a matching set when they were fundamentally different alloys.
"She married for stability," Elara said, her gaze on the fire. "I married for passion. We both got the opposite of what we sought." A bitter, thin smile. "My Carlo was all fireworks and empty pockets. Her Liang…" she trailed off, a complex shadow crossing her face. "He was a glacier. Slow, immense, crushing everything in his path to build his empire. Including, I think, her spirit."
This was new. In all of Wen Jingshen's memories, his parents were a distant, respectable unit.
"Did they not love each other?" I asked gently.
"Love?" Elara barked a laugh. "He loved the idea of her. The English rose, the impeccable hostess, the mother of his heir. She loved… the idea of safety. Of order. After the chaos of our childhood, it was all she wanted. But glaciers are cold places to live."
The conversation was flowing, but I sensed I was being given a rehearsed narrative. I needed to tilt the board.
"The necklaces," I said, leaning forward slightly. "They became symbols of the rift, didn't they? Your husband wished yours to be grander. The correspondence with Duval shows the tension."
Her eyes sharpened. "You have done your homework. Yes. Carlo was a peacock. He wanted my star to outshine hers. It was vulgar. Rosalind's was perfect. Elegant. Pure. Mine was…" she shrugged, "an overworked attempt at grandeur. Just like our marriages." She paused, her fingers plucking at her shawl. "After Carlo's debts… I had to sell many things. But not the necklace. I refused. It was my last piece of… of myself. Then it was stolen. A final humiliation."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room. She was lying. Or weaving truth with lie. Wen Jingshen's dossier said she had claimed it was stolen to hide the sale.
"How terrible," I murmured, injecting just the right amount of pity. "And then, so soon after, the unspeakable tragedy with your sister…"
The air in the room seemed to congeal. Elara's face went very still, all its fleeting expressions freezing into a mask of aged porcelain. "Yes," she whispered. "The accident."
I took a calculated risk. "In my research, I came across a mention of a police officer, Ernst Keller. He seemed to have some… lingering questions."
Her reaction was instantaneous and violent. She didn't startle; she contracted, like a spider sensing a tremor in its web. Her milky eyes blazed with sudden, lucid fear. "Keller," she spat the name. "A busybody. A man who wanted to make a name for himself from our grief. He was dealt with."
Dealt with. The phrase hung in the air, ominous and final.
"The official report seems conclusive," I pressed, softly. "But the loss of her jewelry at the scene… it's such a strange, haunting detail. As if the tragedy weren't enough."
Her gaze drilled into me, the sympathy-seeking scholar facade suddenly seeming transparent under her frantic scrutiny. "Why are you really here?" she demanded, her voice dropping to a venomous hiss. "Was it his idea? Did he send you to dig up the past to hurt me? To punish me for surviving?"
'He' could only be Wen Jingshen. Her paranoia was a living thing in the room.
"No one sent me, Contessa. I'm here alone." I gestured to my solitary bag by the door. "My interest is historical."
She stared at me, her breath coming in shallow rasps. Then, something in her seemed to break, or perhaps strategically open. A tear, genuine and shocking, traced a path through her powder. "He hates me. He always has. He thinks I'm… I'm responsible." Her voice cracked. "But it was him."
My heart stopped. "Who?"
"Liang," she whispered, leaning forward, her eyes wide with a desperate confession. "My brother-in-law. He was driving that car. He was always so controlled, so perfect. But that night… they argued. Terribly. Rosalind wanted to leave him. She told me… she had finally found the courage. She was going to take Jingshen and go back to England. Liang was furious. A divorce would have ruined him socially in certain circles, damaged his precious empire."
The world tilted. I gripped the arms of my chair. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the brakes on that car were always impeccable," she hissed. "Until they weren't. And who had the most to lose if she left? Who had the cold, calculated mind to arrange an… accident? And who," her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, "would have taken her jewelry, not for greed, but to make it look like a common robbery? To remove the symbols of her life, of their marriage?"
The accusation was monstrous. It painted Wen Liang not as a grieving widower, but as a calculating murderer. It explained the too-swift investigation, the pressure. It was a motive that dwarfed sisterly jealousy.
"Do you have proof?" My voice was strangled.
She sank back, the momentary energy draining, leaving her looking ravaged and ancient. "Proof? No. Only a sister's instinct. And the fact that Liang never looked for the jewelry. Not truly. He let the police close the case. He married again, within two years. A suitable, placid woman." She looked at me with infinite weariness. "You seek a tidy story of sisterly rivalry and theft? Look higher. Look to the glacier. It crushes everything, even what it claims to love."
The housekeeper entered then with a tea tray, breaking the poisonous spell. The rest of the visit was a stilted return to superficialities. Elara was drained, retreating into vague, repetitive memories. An hour later, I was shown out. The interview was over.
The drive back down the mountain was a blur. My mind reeled. It was a lie. It had to be. A twisted, self-serving narrative concocted by a bitter, unstable woman to shift blame from herself. Wen Jingshen's father might have been cold, but a murderer? Yet, the detail about Rosalind wanting to leave… it rang with a terrible plausibility. It was a motive no one had ever considered.
Back in my small, discreet hotel room in Montreux overlooking the steel-blue lake, I felt more alone than I ever had in the penthouse cage. I had gone seeking a ghost and found a bottomless chasm of suspicion.
I needed to talk to Wen Jingshen. Not to report, but to hear his voice, to ground myself in the reality of the man I was coming to know, not the monster his aunt had described. But the secure phone was for data, not voice calls. We had agreed on encrypted text updates only.
I powered it on to compose a brief, coded summary. As it booted, a priority alert flashed on the screen.
Intrusion Detected. Mirror Channel Active.
A function he'd explained. If the phone's core encryption was bypassed or mirrored, it would send a silent alarm and activate a secondary, hidden partition—a honeypot of false, mundane research files. Someone was trying to spy on my device in real-time.
Voss. It had to be. He was monitoring not just my location, but my digital activity. My conversation with Elara, if it had been bugged (and it almost certainly had), combined with my digital searches, would paint a very clear picture for him: the scholar was following the trail, and the trail had just led to a shocking accusation against Wen Liang.
This changed everything. Voss now possessed this poisonous theory. He wouldn't care if it was true. He would only see its value as a weapon.
My hotel phone rang, sharp and jarring in the quiet room. I stared at it. Only the driver and the Voss agency had this number.
I picked it up. "Hello?"
"Your research seems to have taken a dramatic turn, Ms. Vance." Roland Voss's voice was smooth, devoid of surprise. "The Contessa is full of fascinating… speculations."
My blood turned to ice. He had been listening. "Mr. Voss. I… I don't know what to say. Those were the ravings of a troubled, elderly woman."
"Are they?" he mused. "History is so often written by the victors. Wen Liang was certainly a victor. He rebuilt, remarried, expanded his empire. His son inherited it all. A very tidy narrative. But I, like you, appreciate the cracks in the porcelain." He paused. "I believe your scholarly journey may require more… robust support. And perhaps a different destination. There is a man in Zurich. A retired clerk who worked for the insurance company that handled the Wen claim. He has grown… talkative in his old age. My car will collect you at eight tomorrow morning. Consider it a supplemental grant."
It was an order, not an offer. He was seizing control of the investigation, redirecting me towards the evidence that would best serve his goal: publicly eviscerating the Wen family legacy, starting with the sanctity of its patriarch.
"I… I need to check my schedule," I stalled, my mind racing.
"Your schedule is clear, Ms. Vance," he said, a hint of steel beneath the silk. "I strongly suggest you keep this appointment. The pursuit of truth requires courage, does it not? Or perhaps you've found your sympathy has its limits?"
The threat was clear. Refuse, and my "sympathetic scholar" cover would be blown. He might expose my true identity, or worse. Agree, and I became his guided missile.
"Eight o'clock," I finally said, my voice hollow.
"Excellent. Sleep well. Tomorrow promises more… illumination."
The line went dead.
I stood in the middle of the room, the twilight painting the lake outside in shades of bruise and fire. I was in over my head, caught between a vengeful ghost, a manipulative spider, and a truth that could destroy the man I was…
The thought stopped me cold.
The man I was what? Obligated to? Allied with? Something else entirely?
The secure phone buzzed again. A text, from the only other number it knew.
Status?
Wen Jingshen.
How could I tell him? How could I type out his aunt's horrific accusation, or announce that his enemy now held it and was marshaling me to corroborate it? That his father, the foundation of the empire he ruled, might be implicated in his mother's murder?
My fingers trembled over the keys. The truth was a weapon, and right now, it felt too heavy, too sharp, to hand over through a text. He needed to hear it, to see it in my face. And I needed to see his.
I typed back, cryptic but urgent: Interview concluded. Complex narrative. Voss has actively intercepted. Redirecting my path tomorrow. Channel was mirrored.
The response was almost immediate. Understood. Disengage. Return to base. Now.
An order. The old, controlling instinct flaring in the face of danger. But returning now would be a retreat, leaving Voss in control of the narrative and the evidence.
Cannot disengage without raising suspicion. Will proceed with caution. Need to assess the source.
A long pause. Then: Too dangerous. You are not expendable.
The words, you are not expendable, struck me in the chest. In his world of calculations and assets, this was as close to a declaration of care as he could likely muster.
I know. That's why I have to see this through. To protect the asset.
I was paraphrasing his own cold terminology back at him, but the meaning beneath was warm and fierce. I am doing this for us.
The pause this time was agonizingly long. Finally, a single word came through.
How?
He was asking for my plan. He was ceding control, trusting my judgment in the field. It was the greatest gift he could have given me.
I began to type, outlining a risky, dual-purpose strategy for the meeting in Zurich. As I typed, watching the lights come on around the darkening lake, I felt a profound shift. I was no longer just playing a part in his revenge, or fighting for my own survival within his cage.
I was fighting for him. For the truth that would either exonerate or devastate him. For the man behind the glacier, who had shown me his cracks and trusted me not to pour in poison.
The cage was gone. I was in the open field of battle now, by my own choice. And the only person I wanted at my side was the one who had once held the key.