Chapter 11 - THE CHOICE HE MADEI refused to move.
The passage filled with dust. My lungs burned. The ledger lay against my chest, heavy as a second child, while stones continued to fall behind me.
“Adriana!” Miriam shouted. “We have to go.”
“Damon is trapped.”
“He knew the risk.”
“Then he can know I’m coming back.”
I dropped to my knees and began pulling stones away.
The first one scraped my palm. The second crushed the edge of my wedding ring. The third was too heavy to move.
“Stop,” Celeste said.
“Help me.”
She stared at me.
“Help me!”
She lowered her weapon and knelt beside me.
Together, we moved the smaller pieces. Miriam watched the corridor, listening for footsteps.
“If the supports fail, we all die,” she said.
“Then find something to hold the ceiling.”
“There is no time.”
“There is always time for the man who saved my life.”
A faint sound came from beneath the rubble.
Three knocks.
Damon’s signal.
I closed my eyes in relief.
“He’s alive.”
We dug faster.
On the other side, Damon shouted, “Stop digging!”
“No.”
“The support beam is broken.”
“Then tell me where to pull.”
“Adriana.”
“I am not leaving you.”
There was a pause.
“The wall to your left,” he said. “Three feet from the floor.”
Miriam found an iron rod. We drove it into the seam between the stones and pushed together.
The wall shifted.
Damon reached through the opening.
His fingers found mine.
I held on.
“You’re hurt,” I said.
“Not seriously.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“You always notice.”
“You always lie.”
His fingers tightened around mine.
“I thought I lost you.”
“You did not.”
“I heard you scream.”
“I was angry.”
“You were afraid.”
“I was both.”
He pulled himself through the opening. Blood streaked his forehead, and one shoulder hung lower than the other. But he was alive.
The moment he stood, I struck his chest.
“Don’t ever tell me to leave you again.”
He accepted the blow without moving.
“You could have died.”
“So could you.”
“I am less important.”
“Not to me.”
The words escaped before he could stop them.
His eyes widened slightly.
So did mine.
The passage shook again.
Miriam grabbed the ledger. “Save the marriage conversation for somewhere that is not collapsing.”
We reached the surface through an abandoned chapel beside the hotel. Sirens wailed in the distance. Smoke rose over the city.
Damon leaned against the stone wall while Dr. Shaw examined him.
“Dislocated shoulder,” she said. “Possible concussion.”
“I’m fine.”
“That is becoming a tedious personality trait.”
Celeste stood apart from us, staring at the burning hotel.
“My father is dead,” she said.
No one answered.
“Isn’t anyone going to say something?”
I looked at her. “Did you love him?”
Her eyes filled but did not spill.
“I loved the version of him who brought me flowers when I was six.”
“And the man he became?”
“I was afraid of him.”
“Then you lost him a long time ago.”
Celeste looked down.
Miriam opened the ledger.
The first pages contained names and dates. The final pages contained photographs.
One showed Damon’s father meeting Marcel.
Another showed Gabriel receiving money from a city official.
Then we found a photograph of Eli.
He was standing in a warehouse with a man I had never seen before.
The man wore a Kalas family ring.
Damon took the photograph.
“That is my uncle,” he said.
“Your father’s brother?”
“He died twenty years ago.”
Miriam shook her head. “He disappeared. Your father announced his death to take control of the family.”
Damon turned the photograph over.
Written on the back were the words: THE FIRST BETRAYAL CAME FROM HOME.
“The traitor is not Gabriel,” Damon said.
Miriam’s face went pale.
“No,” she whispered. “Gabriel was only a servant.”
“Then who leads the network?”
She looked toward the chapel doors.
Outside, a black sedan waited beneath the trees.
“The man who taught your father how to build the empire.”
The rear door opened.
An elderly man stepped into the rain.
He carried a cane with a silver handle shaped like a wolf’s head.
Damon’s face drained of color.
“Uncle Silas.”
The old man smiled.
May you like
“Hello, little wolf.”
Then he raised a gun and shot Miriam in the chest.
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