Search Results: 'Ngalland'

The Gilded Preserve

Words: 3127 · Source Novel:: Death's Only Honesty

Autumn 2018, Connecticut. Ellis Ngalland, a sixteen-year-old ward of a broken foster system, flees a group home after a brutal beating. He slips through the wrought-iron gates of the Blackwood estate, home to Julian Hassel, a hedge-fund titan whose charitable foundations fund half the town. Ellis expects a warm kitchen or a forgotten shed; instead, he stumbles into an underground corridor lined with trophy photographs—human beings posed like game. In the distance, he hears a scream and the clean click of a bolt-action rifle. Unaware that he has already been spotted, Ellis picks up a fallen casing, its brass still warm, and realizes the preserve is not for deer.