Chapter 3

Pressure Opening

Open on pressure.

Protagonist meets immediate pressure before understanding the deeper threat.

The apparent problem opens into a larger one.

Push directly into the next scene.

Clue Escalation

Inez shoved the warped back door of the old dress shop open with her shoulder. The hinges gave a single metallic scream. Rain had followed her across three blocks; it dripped from the hem of her coat and pooled on the warped floorboards beside the sewing machine. Renata stood at the cutting table, both hands flat on a length of black wool, staring at the spot where the torn ledger page had lain an hour earlier.

“You kept the rest of it here,” Inez said. Not a question.

Renata’s fingers curled into the fabric. “I burned what I could the night he disappeared. The rest—” She jerked her chin toward the narrow stair behind the fitting curtain. “—is upstairs. Under the floor where your mother used to hide the rent money.”

Inez moved before the words finished settling. The curtain rings clattered as she pushed through. The stairs were steep and narrow; each tread groaned under her weight. At the landing she found the loose board exactly where memory placed it—third from the left, beside the nail that had once pinned a child’s drawing of a salt circle. She pried it up with her house key.

A slim metal box waited in the

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