The Choice

The voice was a dry, papery whisper, echoing from the ventilation shaft above the fireplace. Simon. He sounded weak, but the malice was undiluted.

"Make a choice, Richard," Simon rasped. "The wife or the brother. You can't keep both."

Richard stood in the library doorway, the silver pistol leveled at my chest. He looked like a man made of glass, ready to shatter. His expensive suit was torn, his face streaked with mud and blood from the bridge.

"Where are you, Simon?" Richard asked, his eyes darting to the vent.

"I'm where the bodies are buried," Simon said. "Or where they should have been."

I looked at Richard. "He's in the priest hole. He must have crawled in from the other side. From the carriage house."

That meant he had access to the gas valve.

"Shut it off, Simon," Richard said. "We can work this out."

"There's nothing to work out," Simon said. "The police are on the bridge. James is bleeding out in the rain. And you... you're holding a gun on the only person who can put you in prison."

He paused, a wheezing cough rattling through the vent.

"Shoot her, Richard. And I'll turn the gas off. We can walk away. Say it was Julian. Say he broke in, killed her, and died in the fire."

Richard looked at me. His hand was steady, but his eyes were pleading. Pleading for me to understand. Or pleading for forgiveness.

"Do it," Simon urged. "She knows too much. About the adoption. About the trust. About Sarah."

"I did it for you," Richard whispered to me. "Everything I did... was to protect you."

"Protect me?" I laughed, a sharp, hysterical sound. "You gaslighted me. You let me think I was crazy. You stole my daughter."

"I gave her a home!" he shouted. "Sarah was unstable! She was going to drag that baby into a life of misery! I saved Maya!"

"You saved yourself," I said. "You needed an heir. And you needed a way to keep Julian's money."

"It was Dad's money," Richard said, his voice cracking. "It was always Dad's money."

"And now it's Maya's," I said. "And you're going to kill her mother to keep it."

I took a step toward him.

"Shoot me, Richard. Do it. But know this: Maya will know. I sent the file. Not the preview. The whole thing."

"You're lying," he said.

"Am I? Check your email."

He hesitated. The gun wavered.

"Don't listen to her!" Simon yelled from the vent. "She's bluffing! Kill her!"

Richard looked at the phone in his pocket. He pulled it out with his free hand. He scrolled.

His face went white.

"You sent it to everyone," he whispered. "The board. The partners. The press."

"I burned it down, Richard," I said. "Just like I promised."

He looked at me. The last shred of his carefully constructed life was gone. The reputation. The fortune. The lies.

He dropped the phone. It cracked on the floor.

"You ruined us," he said.

"I saved us," I said.

He raised the gun again. His expression hardened. The glass man had shattered, and only the shards were left. Sharp. Dangerous.

"Goodbye, Helen."

He squeezed the trigger.

The hammer clicked.

Misfire.

Or empty.

Richard stared at the gun in horror.

"You forgot to count," I said.

I didn't wait. I tackled him. We hit the floor hard, rolling over the broken glass and splintered wood. The gun skittered away.

I wasn't a fighter. I was a mother. And I was done being a victim.

I grabbed a shard of glass from the broken window.

"Turn off the gas!" I screamed at the vent. "Simon! Turn it off!"

"It's too late," Simon's voice drifted down, faint and fading. "The pilot light... in the water heater..."

A low rumble shook the floor.

Not thunder.

Explosion.

From the carriage house.

The blast wave hit the house a second later. The library windows blew inward. The floor heaved.

The tunnel. The fire in the crypt had reached the gas main.

The floor beneath us gave way.

We fell into the dark.