The Blood Barrier

A corrosive matrimonial inferno ignites when Eugene Solari’s possessive gaze hardens into monomania; every breath his wife Enid draws beyond his sight feels to him like a blade twisting in the marrow. Sent by her industrialist father to courier clandestine papers, Enid calls upon Major Trevor—an upright weapons engineer guarding a chemical formula coveted by foreign powers. Eugene’s spy network of servants whispers the visit; jealousy detonates. He races through nocturnal streets, revolver trembling like a tuning fork of rage. Enid, foreseeing carnage, sprints ahead to warn Trevor, yet the foyer’s gaslight greets her with the muzzle flash that writes her epitaph in gunpowder. Eugene’s final act is to perjure Trevor with his dying accusation, binding the innocent soldier in ironclad suspicion. While Trevor languishes in a cell, a sleek continental operative kidnaps the barely-breathing Enid from the hospital morgue’s antechamber, brandishing her life as leverage for the formula. Thus a private hell of marital distrust mutates into geopolitical chess, every move shadowed by the crimson splatter that no amount of diplomacy can scrub away.