Chapter 32: The Aftershocks

We drove back to the Hoard in silence, the weight of Edith’s deception pressing down on the car like gravity. The fire department had left, leaving behind a smoking, charred skeleton of a house. The roof had collapsed, and the front porch was a pile of blackened timber.

But the foundation was stone. Granite and limestone, built to last.

I parked the rental car down the street, hidden behind a row of overgrown hedges.

"She's in the basement," I whispered, staring at the ruins. "She burned the house to cover the entrance, but she's down there. With her money. And her secrets."

"And a gun," Mark added, checking the glove compartment. He pulled out a tire iron. "It's not much, but it's heavy."

"We don't need weapons," I said. "We need leverage. And we have it."

I tapped the black metal box on my lap.

We approached the house from the back, slipping through the alley where the garbage trucks used to come. The smell of wet ash was overpowering.

The kitchen was gone. The dumbwaiter shaft was buried under debris.

"We can't get in that way," Ben said, shining his flashlight over the wreckage.

"There has to be another entrance," I said. "Edith wouldn't trap herself without an exit strategy. She's too careful."

I thought about the receipt for the soundproofing foam. *Delivery: Basement.* But how did they get it down there? The dumbwaiter was too small for 500 square feet of foam.

"The bulkhead," I said. "The old coal chute."

Every Victorian house had one. A metal door set into the foundation, usually on the side of the house, where the coal delivery men would dump fuel for the furnace.

We circled the perimeter. The side of the house was less damaged, protected by the wind direction. I kicked through a pile of fallen siding.

There.

A metal plate, painted black to match the foundation, flush with the ground.

It was padlocked.

"Mark," I said.

He stepped forward with the tire iron. He jammed the tip into the hasp of the lock and leaned into it with all his weight.

The metal groaned. Then, with a sharp *crack*, the lock snapped.

I lifted the heavy door. It shrieked on its hinges.

A concrete ramp led down into the darkness.

"I'll go first," Ben said.

"No," I said. "She's my mother. Or... whatever she is."

I stepped onto the ramp. The air down here was cool, untainted by the fire above. It smelled of damp earth and that same sharp, chemical bleach smell I had noticed in Leo's cell.

At the bottom of the ramp was a steel door. It wasn't locked.

I pushed it open.

We stepped into a hallway. It wasn't a basement. It was a bunker.

The walls were lined with the soundproofing foam, painted white. The floor was polished concrete. There were lights—LED strips running along the ceiling, powered by a generator I could hear humming in the distance.

"She built a fortress under the rot," Mark whispered.

We walked down the hall. There were doors on either side. I opened the first one. A pantry, stocked with canned goods and water. Enough for months.

I opened the second door. A bedroom. pristine, with a four-poster bed and a vanity table.

And sitting at the vanity, brushing her hair in the mirror, was Edith.

She didn't turn around. She just watched us in the reflection.

"You're late," she said. "The flight left hours ago."

"We know," I said. "We saw it."

She put down the brush. "Then why are you here? To beg for scraps?"

"We're here for the truth," I said. "And for justice."

She laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound.

"Justice is something poor people believe in to make themselves feel better about losing," she said.

She stood up and turned to face us. She was wearing a silk dressing gown, her makeup perfect, her hair coiffed. She looked like she was ready for a gala, not hiding in a hole under a burnt-out house.

"I tried to save you," she said, looking at Mark. "I tried to make you something. But you were always weak. Just like your mother."

Mark flinched. "My mother didn't kill people."

"She killed her future," Edith snapped. "Getting pregnant by a married doctor? She was a fool. I gave her a way out. I gave her peace."

"You gave her a grave," Ben said, stepping forward.

Edith looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "And you must be the brother. The carpenter. You have your grandfather's hands. He was useful. Are you?"

"I'm useful enough to bury you," Ben said.

"Edith," I said, stepping between them. "It's over. We know about the exchange. We know about the padding. We know you're adopted."

That stopped her.

Her face went slack. For the first time, the mask didn't just slip. It shattered.

"How?" she whispered.

"Clara kept records," I said. "She knew. She always knew."

I held up the black box.

"We have your birth certificate," I said. "We know you're not a Sterling. You have no claim to the money. No claim to the house. No claim to us."

Edith stared at the box. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"I am more Sterling than any of you," she hissed. "I built this family. I saved the reputation. I cleaned up the messes. Clara was a lunatic. She would have spent the fortune on cat food and yarn."

"She would have loved her son," Leo said from the doorway.

Edith looked at him. She looked at the man she had tried to abort, the man she had imprisoned, the man she had tried to erase.

"Love doesn't pay the bills, Leo," she said. "Love doesn't keep the lights on."

"You're wrong," I said. "Love is the only thing that matters. And you don't have any."

"I have the money," she said. "And as long as I have the money, I have the power."

She reached into the pocket of her dressing gown.

"And I have this."

She pulled out a remote control. A small, black fob with a single red button.

"The fire upstairs was just the beginning," she said. "This basement is rigged. Gas lines. Accelerant. One press, and we all go up in smoke."

She held her thumb over the button.

"Give me the box," she said. "And I might let you leave."

I looked at the remote. I looked at the box in my hand.

I looked at Leo. At Mark. At Ben.

We were trapped. Buried alive with a monster who had nothing left to lose.

"Give it to her," Mark said. "It's just paper."

"It's the truth," I said.

"The truth won't matter if we're dead," Ben said.

I stepped forward. I held out the box.

"Take it," I said.

Edith smiled. She reached out with her free hand.

But as her fingers brushed the metal, I saw something in her eyes. A flicker of triumph. A flicker of finality.

She wasn't going to let us leave.

If she got the box, she would press the button anyway. She would erase the last loose ends.

I let the box fall.

It hit the floor with a loud *clang*.

Edith flinched, her eyes darting down.

And in that split second, I lunged.