Chapter 11: The Choice Bruno Made
Clover caught Bruno beneath the arms and dragged him away from the sparking panel. His boots scraped over concrete; the collar of his shirt twisted in her fists. Heat pressed against her back, and smoke clawed at her throat.
“Grandpa. Open your eyes.”
He sagged against her. She lowered him beside the wall, as far from the snapping wires as she could manage, and slapped his cheek once—not hard, but hard enough to make her own hand sting.
Across the pit, Luke had found a narrow maintenance hatch half-hidden behind a fallen sheet of metal. He drove his shoulder into it. The frame buckled but held.
“Again!” Clover shouted.
Luke struck it with both hands. The panel tore loose with a shriek, revealing a dark shaft beneath the floor. He leaned over it, searching the blackness, then ducked low.
“Air’s moving down there. There may be a drain.”
“May be?”
“It’s what we’ve got.”
A tremor passed through Bruno. His eyelids fluttered.
Clover grabbed his hand. “Stay with me.”
He swallowed, his face pale beneath the soot. His gaze moved from her to the open hatch, then to the cloth bundle under Luke’s shirt.
“The ledger,” Bruno rasped.
“It’s safe,” Clover said.
He shut his eyes for a moment. “I helped your mother hide it.”
The words seemed to cut through the noise more sharply than the alarms that had not yet started.
Clover stared at him. “You knew where it was?”
“I helped her take it to West Calder. I knew what she was trying to preserve.”
“And you never told me.”
Bruno opened his eyes. He didn’t look away. “No.”
Something shifted under Clover’s ribs—not forgiveness, not even surprise. The hurt had been there too long for that. But the truth, spoken plainly, left nowhere for him to hide.
Luke glanced at the smoke pushing across the ceiling. “Clover, we have to move.”
She kept hold of Bruno’s hand. “Did you know they could still come after us?”
His mouth tightened. “Yes.”
The answer landed between them. Her anger rose hot and immediate, almost a relief beside the panic.
“You let me believe there was nothing left to know.”
“I thought if you didn’t know, they couldn’t use you to get to it.”
“You made that choice for me.”
“I did.” Bruno’s breath hitched. “And I was wrong.”
He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t ask her to understand, or to make his choice feel kinder than it had been. His silence now was different from the one he had kept before; it offered no excuse.
Clover’s eyes burned. “You promised she’d never grow up feeling unwanted.”
“I remember.”
“I thought that meant you’d keep her safe. I didn’t know it meant you’d keep the truth from me.”
Bruno looked toward the hatch, where Luke was feeling along the shaft’s edge. “I can’t ask you to trust me because I finally told you.”
“No,” Clover said. “You can’t.”
He nodded once. His hand remained in hers, trembling. She let him keep holding on, but she did not squeeze back.
Behind them, metal groaned. A low rumble traveled through the garage, followed by a brittle crash somewhere in the test office. The smoke thickened, turning the air gritty.
Luke reached into the shaft and swept his hand through the darkness. “There’s a ladder. It drops to a narrow ledge, then the drain.”
“Can we all fit?”
“We’ll have to.”
A thin mechanical wail began beyond the walls. One alarm, then another—echoing through the building and rising until Clover felt the sound in her teeth. The public-address broadcast had reached the property. Whether anyone outside had heard the recording, whether anyone believed it, she couldn’t know.
Then, faint beneath the alarms, came a siren.
Bruno turned his head. “Police?”
“Could be,” Luke said. “Could be fire crews. It doesn’t mean we’re out yet.”
Clover helped Bruno sit up. He grunted, one hand pressed to his chest. She searched his face for another sign of the collapse, another spark of pain.
“Can you stand?”
“I can try.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
Luke came back to them, one hand braced against the wall. His split lip had darkened, and the bruising at his temple was nearly black in the dim emergency glow. He still had the cloth bundle tucked beneath his shirt, protecting it with one arm.
“Give me his weight,” Luke said.
Bruno stiffened. “I can walk.”
“Then prove it slowly.”
Luke offered an arm without forcing it on him. Bruno hesitated, then took it. Together, they got him upright. He leaned heavily on Luke, but his knees held.
Clover went back for the recorder.
It lay beside the console, half under a curl of blackened cable. She crouched, shielding it with her body as another shower of sparks spat from the panel. The recorder’s casing was warm. She lifted it and pressed the switch.
Nothing.
“Don’t waste time,” Luke called.
She shoved it into her coat pocket. Even if the file was damaged, Mara’s voice had been heard. The machine mattered, but it was not worth leaving Bruno behind.
They reached the hatch. Luke descended first, testing each rung before putting his weight on it. The space below smelled of wet stone and rust, the first clean scent Clover had found since the smoke began. He lowered the bundle carefully, then turned and reached for Bruno.
“Wait,” Clover said.
She looked back at the pit, at the dead speakers, the dark control panel, the firelight flickering beneath the office door. Gideon had wanted the building to swallow the evidence and everyone connected to it. The ledger had survived so far. So had the recording. So had they.
But the siren was still distant.
Clover climbed down after Bruno, one hand on the ladder and the other holding his sleeve. At the bottom, the narrow passage forced them to bend. Water seeped across the concrete beneath their shoes.
Luke crawled ahead, one arm wrapped around the bundle. “Keep low. The drain slopes toward the loading side.”
Bruno moved slowly, fighting for each breath. Clover stayed close enough to catch him if his legs failed again. She did not tell him it was all right. It wasn’t. She did not tell him they would talk later, either. Later had become a fragile thing.
The alarm rang overhead. The siren outside swelled, then faded as if the vehicle had turned onto another road.
Luke reached a bend and stopped. A seam of colder air touched Clover’s cheek. He leaned forward, one hand on the wet floor.
May you like
“Outlet’s close,” he whispered.
He crawled toward the drain, then froze as a metal grate dropped shut ahead of him.
